"  Mr.  James  nurses  his  souvenirs  until  they  shine  like 
mellow  wine — holds  them  in  his  warming  hand  as  a 
jeweller  docs  an  ofal,  until  all  their  iridescence  comes  out, 
all  their  secret  charm  and  suavity  breatlie  forth  in  most 
melodious  speech:"1  —  The  Critic. 

HENRY  JAMES'S  LATEST  WORKS. 

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A    LITTLE   TOUR   IN    FRANCE. 

The  delightful  series  of  sketches  of  French  life  and  scenes, 
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HENRY    JAMES 


A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE- 


BOSTON 

JAMES  R.  OSGOOD   AND  COMPANY 
1885 


Copyright,  1884, 
BY  HENRY  JAMES. 

All  rights  reserved. 
//  ^/rfp? 


Elnt'farrst'tn 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


V 


A    LITTLE    TOUE    IN    FRANCE. 


TT  7E  good  Americans  —  I  say  it  without  pre- 
V  V  sumption  —  are  too  apt  to  think  that  France 
is  Paris,  just  as  we  are  accused  of  being  too  apt  to 
think  that  Paris  is  the  celestial  city.  This  is  by  no 
means  the  case,  fortunately  for  those  persons  who 
take  an  interest  in  modern  Gaul,  and  yet  are  still  left 
vaguely  unsatisfied  by  that  epitome  of  civilization 
which  stretches  from  the  Arc  de  Triomphe  to  the 
Gyninase  theatre.  It  had  already  been  intimated  to 
the  author  of  these  light  pages  that  there  are  many 
good  things  in  the  doux  pays  de  France  of  which  you 
get  no  hint  in  a  walk  between  those  ornaments  of 
the  capital ;  but  the  truth  had  been  revealed  only  in 
quick-flashing  glimpses,  and  he  was  conscious  of  a 
desire  to  look  it  well  in  the  face.  To  this  end  he 
started,  one  rainy  morning  in  mid-September,  for  the 
charming  little  city  of  Tours,  from  which  point  it 
seemed  possible  to  make  a  variety  of  fruitful  excur 
sions.  His  excursions  resolved  themselves  ultimately 
into  a  journey  through  several  provinces,  —  a  journey 
which  had  its  dull  moments  (as  one  may  defy  any 
journey  not  to  have),  but  which  enabled  him  to  feel 

1 


2  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [l. 

that  his  proposition  was  demonstrated.  France  may 
be  Paris,  but  Paris  is  not  France  ;  that  was  perfectly 
evident  on  the  return  to  the  capital. 

I  must  not  speak,  however,  as  if  I  had  discovered 
the  provinces.  They  were  discovered,  or  at  least  re 
vealed,  by  Balzac,  if  by  any  one,  and  are  now  easily 
accessible  to  visitors.  It  is  true,  I  met  no  visitors, 
or  only  one  or  two,  whom  it  was  pleasant  to  meet. 
Throughout  my  little  tour  I  was  almost  the  only 
tourist.  That  is  perhaps  one  reason  why  it  was  so 
successful 


I  AM  ashamed  to  begin  with  saying  that  Touraine 
is  the  garden  of  France ;  that  remark  has  long  ago  lost 
its  bloom.  The  town  of  Tours,  however,  has  some 
thing  sweet  and  bright,  which  suggests  that  it  is  sur 
rounded  by  a  land  of  fruits.  It  is  a  very  agreeable 
little  city ;  few  towns  of  its  size  are  more  ripe,  more 
complete,  or,  I  should  suppose,  in  better  humor  with 
themselves  and  less  disposed  to  envy  the  responsibili 
ties  of  bigger  places.  It  is  truly  the  capital  of  its 
smiling  province ;  a  region  of  easy  abundance,  of  good 
living,  of  genial,  comfortable,  optimistic,  rather  indo 
lent  opinions.  Balzac  says  in  one  of  his  tales  that  the 
real  Tourangeau  will  not  make  an  effort,  or  displace 
himself  even,  to  go  in  search  of  a  pleasure ;  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  understand  the  sources  of  this  amiable 
cynicism.  He  must  have  a  vague  conviction  that  he 
can  only  lose  by  almost  any  change.  Fortune  has 
been  kind  to  him :  he  lives  in  a  temperate,  reasonable, 


I.]  TOURS.  3 

sociable  climate,  on  the  banks  of  a  river  which,  it  is 
true,  sometimes  floods  the  country  around  it,  but  of 
which  the  ravages  appear  to  be  so  easily  repaired  that 
its  aggressions  may  perhaps  be  regarded  (in  a  region 
where  so  many  good  things  are  certain)  merely  as  an 
occasion  for  healthy  suspense.  He  is  surrounded  by 
fine  old  traditions,  religious,  social,  architectural,  culi 
nary  ;  and  he  may  have  the  satisfaction  of  feeling  that 
he  is  French  to  the  core.  No  part  of  his  admirable 
country  is  more  characteristically  national.  Nor 
mandy  is  Normandy,  Burgundy  is  Burgundy,  Pro 
vence  is  Provence ;  but  Touraine  is  essentially  France. 
It  is  the  land  of  Eabelais,  of  Descartes,  of  Balzac, 
of  good  books  and  good  company,  as  well  as  good 
dinners  and  good  houses.  George  Sand  has  some 
where  a  charming  passage  about  the  mildness,  the 
convenient  quality,  of  the  physical  conditions  of 
central  France,  —  "  son  climat  souple  et  chaud,  ses 
pluies  abond antes  et  courtes."  In  the  autumn  of  1882 
the  rains  perhaps  were  less  short  than  abundant ;  but 
when  the  days  were  fine  it  was  impossible  that  any 
thing  in  the  way  of  weather  could  be  more  charming. 
The  vineyards  and  orchards  looked  rich  in  the  fresh, 
gay  light;  cultivation  was  everywhere,  but  every 
where  it  seemed  to  be  easy.  There  was  no  visible 
poverty ;  thrift  and  success  presented  themselves  as 
matters  of  good  taste.  The  white  caps  of  the  women 
glittered  in  the  sunshine,  and  their  well-made  sabots 
clicked  cheerfully  on  the  hard,  clean  roads.  Touraine 
is  a  land  of  old  chateaux,  —  a  gallery  of  architectural 
specimens  and  of  large  hereditary  properties.  The 
peasantry  have  less  of  the  luxury  of  ownership  than 
in  most  other  parts  of  France;  though  they  have 


4  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [l. 

enough  of  it  to  give  them  quite  their  share  of  that 
shrewdly  conservative  look  which,  in  the  little  chaf 
fering  place  of  the  market-town,  the  stranger  observes 
so  often  in  the  wrinkled  brown  masks  that  surmount 
the  agricultural  blouse.  This  is,  moreover,  the  heart  of 
the  old  French  monarchy ;  and  as  that  monarchy  was 
splendid  and  picturesque,  a  reflection  of  the  splendor 
still  glitters  in  the  current  of  the  Loire.  Some  of  the 
most  striking  events  of  French  history  have  occurred 
on  the  banks  of  that  river,  and  the  soil  it  waters 
bloomed  for  a  while  with  the  flowering  of  the  Eenais- 
sance.  The  Loire  gives  a  great "  style  "  to  a  landscape 
of  which  the  features  are  not,  as  the  phrase  is,  promi 
nent,  arid  carries  the  eye  to  distances  even  more  poetic 
than  the  green  horizons  of  Touraine.  It  is  a  very  fit 
ful  stream,  and  is  sometimes  observed  to  run  thin  and 
expose  all  the  crudities  of  its  channel, —  a  great  defect 
certainly  in  a  river  which  is  so  much  depended  upon 
to  give  an  air  to  the  places  it  waters.  But  I  speak  of 
it  as  I  saw  it  last ;  full,  tranquil,  powerful,  bending  in 
large  slow  curves,  and  sending  back  half  the  light  of 
the  sky.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than  the  view  of  its 
course  which  you  get  from  the  battlements  and  ter 
races  of  Amboise.  As  I  looked  down  on  it  from  that 
elevation  one  lovely  Sunday  morning,  through  a  mild 
glitter  of  autumn  sunshine,  it  seemed  the  very  model 
of  a  generous,  beneficent  stream.  The  most  charming 
part  of  Tours  is  naturally  the  shaded  quay  that  over 
looks  it,  and  looks  across  too  at  the  friendly  faubourg 
of  Saint  Symphorien  and  at  the  terraced  heights  which 
rise  above  this.  Indeed,  throughout  Touraine,  it  is 
half  the  charm  of  the  Loire  that  you  can  travel  beside 
it.  The  great  dike  which  protects  it,  or  protects  the 


I.]  TOURS.  5 

country  from  it,  from  Blois  to  Angers,  is  an  admirable 
road;  and  on  the  other  side,  as  well,  the  highway 
constantly  keeps  it  company.  A  wide  river,  as  you 
follow  a  wide  road,  is  excellent  company ;  it  heightens 
and  shortens  the  way. 

The  inns  at  Tours  are  in  another  quarter,  and  one 
of  them,  which  is  midway  between  the  town  and  the 
station,  is  very  good.  It  is  worth  mentioning  for  the 
fact  that  every  one  belonging  to  it  is  extraordinarily 
polite, — so  unnaturally  polite  as  at  first  to  excite  your 
suspicion  that  the  hotel  has  some  hidden  vice,  so  that 
the  waiters  and  chambermaids  are  trying  to  pacify 
you  in  advance.  There  was  one  waiter  in  especial  who 
was  the  most  accomplished  social  being  I  have  ever 
encountered;  from  morning  till  night  he  kept  up  an 
inarticulate  murmur  of  urbanity,  like  the  hum  of  a 
spinning-top.  I  may  add  that  I  discovered  no  dark 
secrets  at  the  H6tel  de  1'Univers ;  for  it  is  not  a  secret 
to  any  traveller  to-day  that  the  obligation  to  partake 
of  a  lukewarm  dinner  in  an  overheated  room  is  as 
imperative  as  it  is  detestable.  For  the  rest,  at  Tours, 
there  is  a  certain  Eue  Eoyale  which  has  pretensions 
to  the  monumental;  it  was  constructed  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  the  houses,  all  alike,  have  on  a  mod 
erate  scale  a  pompous  eighteenth-century  look.  It 
connects  the  Palais  de  Justice,  the  most  important 
secular  building  in  the  town,  with  the  long  bridge 
which  spans  the  Loire,  —  the  spacious,  solid  bridge 
pronounced  by  Balzac,  in  "  Le  Cure  de  Tours,"  "  one  of 
the  finest  monuments  of  French  architecture."  The 
Palais  de  Justice  was  the  seat  of  the  Government 
of  Leon  Gambetta  in  the  autumn  of  1870,  after  the 
dictator  had  been  obliged  to  retire  in  his  balloon  from 


6  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [l. 

Paris,  and  before  the  Assembly  was  constituted  at 
Bordeaux.  The  Germans  occupied  Tours  during 
that  terrible  winter ;  it  is  astonishing,  the  number  of 
places  the  Germans  occupied.  It  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  wherever  one  goes  in  certain  parts  of 
France,  one  encounters  two  great  historic  facts:  one 
is  the  Eevolution ;  the  other  is  the  German  invasion. 
The  traces  of  the  Eevolution  remain  in  a  hundred 
scars  and  bruises  and  mutilations,  but  the  visible 
marks  of  the  war  of  1870  have  passed  away.  The 
country  is  so  rich,  so  living,  that  she  has  been  able  to 
dress  her  wounds,  to  hold  up  her  head,  to  smile  again ; 
so  that  the  shadow  of  that  darkness  has  ceased  to  rest 
upon  her.  But  what  you  do  not  see  you  still  may 
hear ;  and  one  remembers  with  a  certain  shudder  that 
only  a  few  short  years  ago  this  province,  so  inti 
mately  French,  was  under  the  heel  of  a  foreign  foe. 
To  be  intimately  French  was  apparently  not  a  safe 
guard  ;  for  so  successful  an  invader  it  could  only  be 
a  challenge.  Peace  and  plenty,  however,  have  suc 
ceeded  that  episode ;  and  among  the  gardens  and 
vineyards  of  Touraine  it  seems  only  a  legend  the 
more  in  a  country  of  legends. 

It  was  not,  all  the  same,  for  the  sake  of  this  check 
ered  story  that  I  mentioned  the  Palais  de  Justice 
and  the  Eue  Eoyale.  The  most  interesting  fact,  to  my 
mind,  about  the  high-street  of  Tours  was  that  as  you 
walked  toward  the  bridge  on  the  right-hand  trottoir 
you  can  look  up  at  the  house,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  way,  in  which  Honore  de  Balzac  first  saw  the 
light.  That  violent  and  complicated  genius  was  a 
child  of  the  good-humored  and  succulent  Touraine. 
There  is  something  anomalous  in  this  fact,  though,  if 


I.]  TOUES.  7 

one  thinks  about  it  a  little,  one  may  discover  certain 
correspondences  between  his  character  and  that  of  his 
native  province.     Strenuous,  laborious,  constantly  in 
felicitous  in  spite  of  his  great  successes,  he  suggests 
at  times  a  very  different  set  of  influences.     But  he  had 
his  jovial,  full-feeding  side,  —  the  side  that  comes  out 
in  the  "  Contes  Drolatiques,"  which  are  the  romantic 
and  epicurean  chronicle  of  the  old  manors  and  abbeys 
of  this  region.     And  he  was,  moreover,  the  product 
of  a  soil  into  which  a  great  deal  of  history  had  been 
trodden.     Balzac  was  genuinely  as  well  as  affectedly 
monarchical,  and  he  was  saturated  with  a  sense  of  the 
past.     Number  39  Eue  Koyale  —  of  which  the  base 
ment,  like  all  the  basements  in  the  Eue  Eoyale,  is 
occupied  by  a  shop  —  is  not  shown  to  the  public; 
and   I  know  not  whether  tradition  designates  the 
chamber  in  which  the  author  of  "Le  Lys  dans  la 
Vallee"  opened  his  eyes  into  a  world  in  which  he 
was  to  see  and  to  imagine  such  extraordinary  things. 
If  this  were  the  case,  I  would  willingly  have  crossed 
its  threshold;  not  for  the  sake  of  any  relic  of  the 
great  novelist  which  it  may  possibly  contain,  nor 
even  for  that  of  any  mystic  virtue  which  may  be 
supposed  to  reside  within  its  walls,  but  simply  be 
cause  to  look  at  those  four  modest  walls  can  hardly 
fail  to  give  one  a  strong  impression  of  the  force  of  hu 
man  endeavor.     Balzac,  in  the  maturity  of  his  vision, 
took  in  more  of  human  life  than  any  one,  since  Shak- 
speare,  who  has  attempted  to  tell  us  stories  about  it ; 
and  the  very  small  scene  on  which  his  consciousness 
dawned  is  one  end  of  the  immense  scale  that  he 
traversed.     I  confess  it  shocked  me  a  little  to  find 
that  he  was  born  in  a  house  "  in  a  row,"  —  a  house, 


8  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [l. 

moreover,  which  at  the  date  of  his  birth  must  have 
been  only  about  twenty  years  old.  All  that  is  con 
tradictory.  If  the  tenement  selected  for  this  honor 
could  not  be  ancient  and  embrowned,  it  should  at 
least  have  been  detached. 

There  is  a  charming  description,  in  his  little  tale  of 
"  La  Grenadiere,"  of  the  view  of  the  opposite  side  of 
the  Loire  as  you  have  it  from  the  square  at  the  end 
of  the  Eue  Eoyale,  —  a  square  that  has  some  preten 
sions  to  grandeur,  overlooked  as  it  is  by  the  Hotel  de 
Ville  and  the  Musee,  a  pair  of  edifices  which  directly 
contemplate  the  river,  and  ornamented  with  marble 
images   of  Francois   Eabelais   and  Eene  Descartes. 
The  former,  erected  a  few  years  since,  is  a  very  honor 
able  production;  the  pedestal  of  the  latter  could,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  only  be  inscribed  with  the  Cogito 
ergo  Sum.     The  two  statues  mark  the  two  opposite 
poles  to  which  the  brilliant  French  mind  has  travelled ; 
and  if  there  were  an  effigy  of  Balzac  at  Tours,  it  ought 
to  stand  midway  between  them.     Not  that  he  by  any 
means  always  struck  the  happy  mean  between  the 
sensible  and  the  metaphysical ;  but  one  may  say  of 
him  that  half  of  his  genius  looks  in  one  direction 
and  half  in  the  other.     The  side  that  turns  toward 
Francois  Eabelais  would  be,  on  the  whole,  the  side 
that  takes  the  sun.     But  there  is  no  statue  of  Balzac 
at  Tours ;  there  is  only,  in  one  of  the  chambers  of 
the  melancholy  museum,  a  rather  clever,  coarse  bust. 
The  description  in  "  La  Grenadiere/'  of  which  I  just 
spoke,  is  too  long  to  quote  ;  neither  have  I  space  for 
any  one  of  the  brilliant  attempts  at  landscape  paint 
ing  which  are  woven  into  the  shimmering  texture 
of  "Le  Lys  dans  la  Vallee."     The  little  manor  of 


I.]  TOURS.  9 

Clochegourde,  the  residence  of  Madame  de  Mortsauf, 
the  heroine  of  that  extraordinary  work,  was  within  a 
moderate  walk  of  Tours,  and  the  picture  in  the  novel 
is  presumably  a  copy  from  an  original  which  it  would 
be  possible  to-day  to  discover.  I  did  not,  however, 
even  make  the  attempt.  There  are  so  many  chateaux 
in  Touraine  commemorated  in  history,  that  it  would 
take  one  too  far  to  look  up  those  which  have  been 
commemorated  in  fiction.  The  most  I  did  was  to 
endeavor  to  identify  the  former  residence  of  Made 
moiselle  Gamard,  the  sinister  old  maid  of  "  Le  Cure  de 
Tours."  This  terrible  woman  occupied  a  small  house 
in  the  rear  of  the  cathedral,  where  I  spent  a  whole 
morning  in  wondering  rather  stupidly  which  house  it 
could  be.  To  reach  the  cathedral  from  the  little 
place  where  we  stopped  just  now  to  look  across  at  the 
Grenadiere,  without,  it  must  be  confessed,  very  vividly 
seeing  it,  you  follow  the  quay  to  the  right,  and  pass  out 
of  sight  of  the  charming  coteau  which,  from  beyond 
the  river,  faces  the  town,  —  a  soft  agglomeration  of 
gardens,  vineyards,  scattered  villas,  gables  and  turrets 
of  slate-roofed  chateaux,  terraces  with  gray  balus 
trades,  moss-grown  walls  draped  in  scarlet  Virginia- 
creeper.  You  turn  into  the  town  again  beside  a  great 
military  barrack  which  is  ornamented  with  a  rugged 
mediaeval  tower,  a  relic  of  the  ancient  fortifications, 
known  to  the  Tourangeaux  of  to-day  as  the  Tour  de 
Guise.  The  young  Prince  of  Joinville,  son  of  that 
Duke  of  Guise  who  was  murdered  by  the  order  of 
Henry  II.  at  Blois,  was,  after  the  death  of  his  father, 
confined  here  for  more  than  two  years,  but  made  his 
escape  one  summer  evening  in  1591,  under  the  nose 
of  his  keepers,  with  a  gallant  audacity  which  has 


10  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [ll. 

attached  the  memory  of  the  exploit  to  his  sullen- 
looking  prison.  Tours  has  a  garrison  of  five  regi 
ments,  and  the  little  red-legged  soldiers  light  up  the 
town.  You  see  them  stroll  upon  the  clean,  uncommer 
cial  quay,  where  there  are  no  signs  of  navigation,  not 
even  by  oar,  no  barrels  nor  bales,  no  loading  nor  un 
loading,  no  masts  against  the  sky  nor  booming  of  steam 
in  the  air.  The  most  active  business  that  goes  on 
there  is  that  patient  and  fruitless  angling  in  which 
the  French,  as  the  votaries  of  art  for  art,  excel  all  other 
people.  The  little  soldiers,  weighed  down  by  the 
contents  of  their  enormous  pockets,  pass  with  respect 
from  one  of  these  masters  of  the  rod  to  the  other,  as 
he  sits  soaking  an  indefinite  bait  in  the  large,  indif 
ferent  stream.  After  you  turn  your  back  to  the  quay 
you  have  only  to  go  a  little  way  before  you  reach  the 
cathedral. 


n. 


IT  is  a  very  beautiful  church  of  the  second  order 
of  importance,  with  a  charming  mouse-colored  com 
plexion  and  a  pair  of  fantastic  towers.  There  is  a 
commodious  little  square  in  front  of  it,  from  which 
you  may  look  up  at  its  very  ornamental  face  ;  but  for 
purposes  of  frank  admiration  the  sides  and  the  rear 
are  perhaps  not  sufficiently  detached.  The  cathedral 
of  Tours,  which  is  dedicated  to  Saint  Gatianus,  took 
a  long  time  to  build.  Begun  in  1170,  it  was  finished 
only  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  but  the 
ages  and  the  weather  have  interfused  so  well  the  tone 
of  the  different  parts,  that  it  presents,  at  first  at  least, 


II.]          TOUKS:  THE  CATHEDRAL.          11 

no  striking  incongruities,  and  looks  even  exception 
ally  harmonious  and  complete.  There  are  many 
grander  cathedrals,  but  there  are  probably  few  more 
pleasing ;  and  this  effect  of  delicacy  and  grace  is  at  its 
best  toward  the  close  of  a  quiet  afternoon,  when  the 
densely  decorated  towers,  rising  above  the  little  Place 
de  I'Archeveche',  lift  their  curious  lanterns  into  the 
slanting  light,  and  offer  a  multitudinous  perch  to 
troops  of  circling  pigeons.  The  whole  front,  at  such 
a  time,  has  an  appearance  of  great  richness,  although 
the  niches  which  surround  the  three  high  doors  (with 
recesses  deep  enough  for  several  circles  of  sculpture) 
and  indent  the  four  great  buttresses  that  ascend  beside 
the  huge  rose-window,  carry  no  figures  beneath  their 
little  chiselled  canopies.  The  blast  of  the  great  Ee vo 
lution  blew  down  most  of  the  statues  in  Trance,  and 
the  wind  has  never  set  very  strongly  toward  putting 
them  up  again.  The  embossed  and  crocketed  cupolas 
which  crown  the  towers  of  Saint  Gatien  are  not  very 
pure  in  taste ;  but,  like  a  good  many  impurities,  they 
have  a  certain  character.  The  interior  has  a  stately 
slimness  with  which  no  fault  is  to  be  found,  and 
which  in  the  choir,  rich  in  early  glass  and  surrounded 
by  a  broad  passage,  becomes  very  bold  and  noble. 
Its  principal  treasure,  perhaps,  is  the  charming  lit 
tle  tomb  of  the  two  children  (who  died  young)  of 
Charles  VIII.  and  Anne  of  Brittany,  in  white  marble, 
embossed  with  symbolic  dolphins  and  exquisite  ara 
besques.  The  little  boy  and  girl  lie  side  by  side  on 
a  slab  of  black  marble,  and  a  pair  of  small  kneeling 
angels,  both  at  their  head  and  at  their  feet,  watch 
over  them.  Nothing  could  be  more  perfect  than  this 
monument,  which  is  the  work  of  Michel  Colomb,  one 


12  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [n. 

of  the  earlier  glories  of  the  French  Eenaissance  ;  it  is 
really  a  lesson  in  good  taste.  Originally  placed  in  the 
great  abbey-church  of  Saint  Martin,  which  was  for  so 
many  ages  the  holy  place  of  Tours,  it  happily  sur 
vived  the  devastation  to  which  that  edifice,  already 
sadly  shattered  by  the  wars  of  religion  and  successive 
profanations,  finally  succumbed  in  1797.  In  1815 
the  tomb  found  an  asylum  in  a  quiet  corner  of  the 
cathedral. 

I  ought,  perhaps,  to  be  ashamed  to  acknowledge, 
that  I  found  the  profane  name  of  Balzac  capable  of 
adding  an  interest  even  to  this  venerable  sanctuary. 
Those  who  have  read  the  terrible  little  story  of  "  Le 
Cure  de  Tours"  will  perhaps  remember  that,  as  I 
have  already  mentioned,  the  simple  and  childlike  old 
Abbe  Birotteau,  victim  of  the  infernal  machinations 
of  the  Abbe  Troubert  and  Mademoiselle  Gamard, 
had  his  quarters  in  the  house  of  that  lady  (she  had 
a  specialty  of  letting  lodgings  to  priests),  which 
stood  on  the  north  side  of  the  cathedral,  so  close  un 
der  its  walls  that  the  supporting  pillar  of  one  of  the 
great  flying  buttresses  was  planted  in  the  spinster's 
garden.  If  you  wander  round  behind  the  church,  in 
search  of  this  more  than  historic  habitation,  you  will 
have  occasion  to  see  that  the  side  and  rear  of  Saint 
Gatien  make  a  delectable  and  curious  figure.  A  nar 
row  lane  passes  beside  the  high  wall  which  conceals 
from  sight  the  palace  of  the  archbishop,  and  beneath 
the  flying  buttresses,  the  far-projecting  gargoyles, 
and  the  fine  south  porch  of  the  church.  It  termi 
nates  in  a  little,  dead,  grass-grown  square  entitled 
the  Place  Gregoire  de  Tours.  All  this  part  of  the  ex 
terior  of  the  cathedral  is  very  brown,  ancient,  Gothic, 


XL]  TOUKS  :    THE  CATHEDRAL.  13 

grotesque ;  Balzac  calls  the  whole  place  "  a  desert 
of  stone."  A  battered  and  gabled  wing,  or  out-house 
(as  it  appears  to  be),  of  the  hidden  palace,  with 
a  queer  old  stone  pulpit  jutting  out  from  it,  looks 
down  on  this  melancholy  spot,  on  the  other  side  of 
which  is  a  seminary  for  young  priests,  one  of  whom 
issues  from  a  door  in  a  quiet  corner,  and,  holding  it 
open  a  moment  behind  him,  shows  a  glimpse  of  a 
sunny  garden,  where  you  may  fancy  other  black 
young  figures  strolling  up  and  down.  Mademoiselle 
Gamard's  house,  where  she  took  her  two  abbes  to 
board,  and  basely  conspired  with  one  against  the 
other,  is  still  further  round  the  cathedral.  You  can 
not  -quite  put  your  hand  upon  it  to-day,  for  the 
dwelling  of  which  you  say  to  yourself  that  it  must 
have  been  Mademoiselle  Gamard's  does  not  fulfil  all 
the  conditions  mentioned  in  Balzac's  description. 
The  edifice  in  question,  however,  fulfils  conditions 
enough ;  in  particular,  its  little  court  offers  hospital 
ity  to  the  big  buttress  of  the  church.  Another  but 
tress,  corresponding  with  this  (the  two,  between  them, 
sustain  the  gable  of  the  north  transept),  is  planted  in 
the  small  cloister,  of  which  the  door  on  the  further 
side  of  the  little  soundless  Rue  de  la  Psalette,  where 
nothing  seems  ever  to  pass,  opens  opposite  to  that  of 
Mademoiselle  Gamard.  There  is  a  very  genial  old 
sacristan,  who  introduced  me  to  this  cloister  from  the 
church.  It  is  very  small  and  solitary,  and  much  mu 
tilated  ;  but  it  nestles  with  a  kind  of  wasted  friend 
liness  beneath  the  big  walls  of  the  cathedral.  Its 
lower  arcades  have  been  closed,  and  it  has  a  small 
plot  of  garden  in  the  middle,  with  fruit-trees  which  I 
should  imagine  to  be  too  much  overshadowed.  In 


14  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [ill. 

one  corner  is  a  remarkably  picturesque  turret,  the 
cage  of  ,a  winding  staircase  which  ascends  (no  great 
distance)  to  an  upper  gallery,  where  an  old  priest, 
the  chanoine-gardien  of  the  church,  was  walking  to 
and  fro  with  his  breviary.  The  turret,  the  gallery, 
and  even  the  chanoine-gardien,  belonged,  that  sweet 
September  morning,  to  the  class  of  objects  that  are 
dear  to  painters  in  water-colors. 


m. 


I  HAVE  mentioned  the  church  of  Saint  Martin, 
which  was  for  many  years  the  sacred  spot,  the  shrine 
of  pilgrimage,  of  Tours.  Originally  the  simple  burial- 
place  of  the  great  apostle  who  in  the  fourth  century 
Christianized  Gaul,  and  who,  in  his  day  a  brilliant 
missionary  and  worker  of  miracles,  is  chiefly  known 
to  modern  fame  as  the  worthy  that  cut  his  cloak  in 
two  at  the  gate  of  Amiens  to  share  it  with  a  beggar 
(tradition  fails  to  say,  I  believe,  what  he  did  with  the 
other  half),  the  abbey  of  Saint  Martin,  through  the  Mid 
dle  Ages,  waxed  rich  and  powerful,  till  it  was  known 
at  last  as  one  of  the  most  luxurious  religious  houses 
in  Christendom,  with  kings  for  its  titular  abbots  (who, 
like  Francis  I.,  sometimes  turned  and  despoiled  it) 
and  a  great  treasure  of  precious  things.  It  passed, 
however,  through  many  vicissitudes.  Pillaged  by 
the  Normans  in  the  ninth  century  and  by  the  Hu 
guenots  in  the  sixteenth,  it  received  its  death-blow 
from  the  Eevolution,  which  must  have  brought  to 
bear  upon  it  an  energy  of  destruction  proportionate 


III.]  TOURS  :    SAINT  MARTIN.  15 

to  its  mighty  bulk.  At  the  end  of  the  last  century 
a  huge  group  of  ruins  alone  remained,  and  what  we 
see  to-day  may  be  called  the  ruin  of  a  ruin.  It  is 
difficult  to  understand  how  so  vast  an  edifice  can 
have  been  so  completely  obliterated.  Its  site  is  given 
up  to  several  ugly  streets,  and  a  pair  of  tall  towers, 
separated  by  a  space  which  speaks  volumes  as  to  the 
size  of  the  church,  and  looking  across  the  close-pressed 
roofs  to  the  happier  spires  of  the  cathedral,  preserve 
for  the  modern  world  the  memory  of  a  great  fortune, 
a  great  abuse,  perhaps,  and  at  all  events  a  great  pen 
alty.  One  may  believe  that  to  this  day  a  consider 
able  part  of  the  foundations  of  the  great  abbey  is 
buried  in  the  soil  of  Tours.  The  two  surviving  towers, 
which  are  dissimilar  in  shape,  are  enormous;  with 
those  of  the  cathedral  they  form  the  great  landmarks  of 
the  town.  One  of  them  bears  the  name  of  the  Tour 
de  1'Horloge;  the  other,  the  so-called  Tour  Charle 
magne,  was  erected  (two  centuries  after  her  death) 
over  the  tomb  of  Luitgarde,  wife  of  the  great  Em 
peror,  who  died  at  Tours  in  800.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
understand  in  what  relation  these  very  mighty  and 
effectually  detached  masses  of  masonry  stood  to  each 
other,  but  in  their  gray  elevation  and  loneliness  they 
are  striking  and  suggestive  to-day ;  holding  their  hoary 
heads  far  above  the  modern  life  of  the  town,  and 
looking  sad  and  conscious,  as  they  had  outlived  all 
uses.  I  know  not  what  is  supposed  to  have  become 
of  the  bones  of  the  blessed  saint  during  the  various 
scenes  of  confusion  in  which  they  may  have  got  mislaid ; 
but  a  mystic  connection  with  his  wonder- working 
relics  may  be  perceived  in  a  strange  little  sanctuary 
on  the  left  of  the  street,  which  opens  in  front  of  the 


16  A  LITTLE  TOUR   IN  FRANCE.  [ill. 

Tour  Charlemagne,  —  the  rugged  base  of  which,  by 
the  way,  inhabited  like  a  cave,  with  a  diminutive 
doorway,  in  which,  as  I  passed,  an  old  woman  stood 
cleaning  a  pot,  and  a  little  dark  window  decorated 
with  homely  flowers,  would  be  appreciated  by  a 
painter  in  search  of  "bits."  The  present  shrine  of 
Saint  Martin  is  enclosed  (provisionally,  I  suppose)  in 
a  very  modern  structure  of  timber,  where  in  a  dusky 
cellar,  to  which  you  descend  by  a  wooden  staircase 
adorned  with  votive  tablets  and  paper  roses,  is  placed 
a  tabernacle  surrounded  by  twinkling  tapers  and  pros 
trate  worshippers.  Even  this  crepuscular  vault,  how 
ever,  fails,  I  think,  to  attain  solemnity ;  for  the  whole 
place  is  strangely  vulgar  and  garish.  The  Catholic 
church,  as  churches  go  to-day,  is  certainly  the  most 
spectacular ;  but  it  must  feel  that  it  has  a  great  fund 
of  impressiveness  to  draw  upon  when  it  opens  such 
sordid  little  shops  of  sanctity  as  this.  It  is  impos 
sible  not  to  be  struck  with  the  grotesqueness  of  such 
an  establishment,  as  the  last  link  in  the  chain  of  a 
great  ecclesiastical  tradition. 

In  the  same  street,  on  the  other  side,  a  little  below, 
is  something  better  worth  your  visit  than  the  shrine 
of  Saint  Martin.  Knock  at  a  high  door  in  a  white 
wall  (there  is  a  cross  above  it),  and  a  fresh-faced 
sister  of  the  convent  of  the  Petit  Saint  Martin  will 
let  you  into  the  charming  little  cloister,  or  rather 
fragment  of  a  cloister.  Only  one  side  of  this  exqui 
site  structure  remains,  but  the  whole  place  is  effective. 
In  front  of  the  beautiful  arcade,  which  is  terribly 
bruised  and  obliterated,  is  one  of  those  walks  of  inter 
laced  tilleuls  which  are  so  frequent  in  Touraine,  and 
into  which  the  green  light  filters  so  softly  through  a 


HI.]  TOURS  :    SAINT  JULIAN.  17 

lattice  of  clipped  twigs.  Beyond  this  is  a  garden, 
and  beyond  the  garden  are  the  other  buildings  of  the 
convent,  where  the  placid  sisters  keep  a  school,  —  a 
test,  doubtless,  of  placidity.  The  imperfect  arcade, 
which  dates  from  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  cen 
tury  (I  know  nothing  of  it  but  what  is  related  in 
Mrs.  Pattison's  "  Eenaissance  in  France  "),  is  a  truly 
enchanting  piece  of  work ;  the  cornice  and  the  angles 
of  the  arches  being  covered  with  the  daintiest  sculp 
ture  of  arabesques,  flowers,  fruit,  medallions,  cherubs, 
griffins,  all  in  the  finest  and  most  attenuated  relief. 
It  is  like  the  chasing  of  a  bracelet  in  stone.  The 
taste,  the  fancy,  the  elegance,  the  refinement,  are  of 
those  things  which  revive  our  standard  of  the  ex 
quisite.  Such  a  piece  of  work  is  the  purest  flower 
of  the  French  Renaissance;  there  is  nothing  more 
delicate  in  all  Touraine. 

There  is  another  fine  thing  at  Tours  which  is  not 
particularly  delicate,  but  which  makes  a  great  im 
pression,  —  the  very  interesting  old  church  of  Saint 
Julian,  lurking  in  a  crooked  corner,  at  the  right  of 
the  Rue  Royale,  near  the  point  at  which  this  indif 
ferent  thoroughfare  emerges,  with  its  little  cry  of  ad 
miration,  on  the  bank  of  the  Loire.  Saint  Julian 
stands  to-day  in  a  kind  of  neglected  hollow,  where  it 
is  much  shut  in  by  houses;  but  in  the  year  1225, 
when  the  edifice  was  begun,  the  site  was  doubtless, 
as  the  architects  say,  more  eligible.  At  present,  in 
deed,  when  once  you  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
stout,  serious  Romanesque  tower,  —  which  is  not  high, 
but  strong,  —  you  feel  that  the  building  has  something 
to  say,  and  that  you  must  stop  to  listen  to  it.  With 
in,  it  has  a  vast  and  splendid  nave,  of  immense  height, 

2 


18  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [ill. 

—  the  nave  of  a  cathedral,  —  with  a  shallow  choir  and 
transepts,   and   some   admirable   old  glass.     I  spent 
half  an  hour  there  one  morning,  listening .  to  what 
the   church   had   to   say,  in   perfect   solitude.     Not 
a  worshipper  entered,  —  not  even  an  old  man  with  a 
broom.     I  have  always  thought  there  is  a  sex  in  fine 
buildings ;  and  Saint  Julian,  with  its  noble  nave,  is 
of  the  gender  of  the  name  of  its  patron. 

It  was  that  same  morning,  I  think,  that  I  went  in 
search  of  the  old  houses  of  Tours ;  for  the  town  con 
tains  several  goodly  specimens  of  the  domestic  ar 
chitecture  of  the  past.  The  dwelling  to  which  the 
average  Anglo-Saxon  will  most  promptly  direct  his 
steps,  and  the  only  one  I  have  space  to  mention,  is  the 
so-called  Maison  de  Tristan  1'Hermite,  —  a  gentleman 
whom  the  readers  of  "  Quentin  Dtirward  "  will  not  have 
forgotten,  —  the  hangman-in-ordinary  to  the  great 
King  Louis  XI.  Unfortunately  the  house  of  Tristan 
is  not  the  house  of  Tristan  at  all;  this  illusion  has 
been  cruelly  dispelled.  There  are  no  illusions  left,  at 
all,  in  the  good  city  of  Tours,  with  regard  to  Louis  XI. 
His  terrible  castle  of  Plessis,  the  picture  of  which 
sends  a  shiver  through  the  youthful  reader  of  Scott, 
has  been  reduced  to  surburban  insignificance;  and 
the  residence  of  his  triste  compere,  on  the  front  of 
which  a  festooned  rope  figures  as  a  motive  for  decora 
tion,  is  observed  to  have  been  erected  in  the  suc 
ceeding  century.  The  Maison  de  Tristan  may  be 
visited  for  itself,  however,  if  not  for  "Walter  Scott ;  it 
is  an  exceedingly  picturesque  old  facade,  to  which  you 
pick  your  way  through  a  narrow  and  tortuous  street, 

—  a   street  terminating,  a .  little   beyond   it,  in  the 
walk  beside  the  river.    An  elegant  gothic  doorway  is 


III.]  TOURS:    PLESSIS-LES-TOURS.  19 

let  into  the  rusty-red  brick-work,  and  strange  little 
beasts  crouch  at  the  angles  of  the  windows,  which  are 
surmounted  by  a  tall  graduated  gable,  pierced  with  a 
small  orifice,  where  the  large  surface  of  brick,  lifted 
out  of  the  shadow  of  the  street,  looks  yellow  and 
faded.  The  whole  thing  is  disfigured  and  decayed; 
but  it  is  a  capital  subject  for  a  sketch  in  colors. 
Only  I  must  wish  the  sketcher  better  luck  —  or  a 
better  temper  —  than  my  own.  If  he  ring  the  be]l  to 
be  admitted  to  see  the  court,  which  I  believe  is  more 
sketchable  still,  let  him  have  patience  to  wait  till  the 
bell  is  answered.  He  can  do  the  outside  while  they 
are  coming. 

The  Maison  de  Tristan,  I  say,  may  be  visited  for  it 
self  ;  but  I  hardly  know  what  the  remnants  of  Plessis- 
les-Tours  may  be  visited  for.  To  reach  them  you 
wander  through  crooked  surburban  lanes,  down  the 
course  of  the  Loire,  to  a  rough,  undesirable,  incon 
gruous  spot,  where  a  small,  crude  building  of  red 
brick  is  pointed  out  to  you  by  your  cabman  (if  you 
happen  to  drive)  as  the  romantic  abode  of  a  super 
stitious  king,  and  where  a  strong  odor  of  pigsties 
and  other  unclean  things  so  prostrates  you  for  the 
moment  that  you  have  no  energy  to  protest  against 
this  obvious  fiction.  You  enter  a  yard  encumbered 
with  rubbish  and  a  defiant  dog,  and  an  old  woman 
emerges  from  a  shabby  lodge  and  assures  you  that 
you  are  indeed  in  an  historic  place.  The  red  brick 
building,  which  Ipoks  like  a  small  factory,  rises  on  the 
ruins  of  the  favorite  residence  of  the  dreadful  Louis. 
It  is  now  occupied  by  a  company  of  night-scavengers, 
whose  huge  carts  are  drawn  up  in  a  row  before  it.  I 
know  not  whether  this  be  what  is  called  the  irony  of 


20  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [ill. 

fate;  at  any  rate,  the  effect  of  it  is  to  accentuate 
strongly  the  fact  (and  through  the  most  susceptible 
of  our  senses)  that  there  is  no  honor  for  the  authors 
of  great  wrongs.  The  dreadful  Louis  is  reduced 
simply  to  an  offence  to  the  nostrils.  The  old  woman 
shows  you  a  few  fragments,  —  several  dark,  damp, 
much-encumbered  vaults,  denominated  dungeons,  and 
an  old  tower  staircase,  in  good  condition.  There  are 
the  outlines  of  the  old  moat ;  there  is  also  the  out 
line  of  the  old  guard-room,  which  is  now  a  stable ; 
and  there  are  other  vague  outlines  and  inconsequent 
lumps,  which  I  have  forgotten.  You  need  all  your 
imagination,  and  even  then  you  cannot  make  out  that 
Plessis  was  a  castle  of  large  extent,  though  the  old 
woman,  as  your  eye  wanders  over  the  neighboring 
potagers,  talks  a  good  deal  about  the  gardens  and  the 
park.  The  place  looks  mean  and  flat ;  and  as  you 
drive  away  you  scarcely  know  whether  to  be  glad  or 
sorry  that  all  those  bristling  horrors  have  been  re 
duced  to  the  commonplace. 

A  certain  flatness  of  impression  awaits  you  also,  I 
think,  at  Marmoutier,  which  is  the  other  indispen 
sable  excursion  in  the  near  neighborhood  of  Tours. 
The  remains  of  this  famous  abbey  lie  on  the  other 
bank  of  the  stream,  about  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the 
town.  You  follow  the  edge  of  the  big  brown  river ;  of 
a  fine  afternoon  you  will  be  glad  to  go  further  still. 
The  abbey  has  gone  the  way  of  most  abbeys ;  but  the 
place  is  a  restoration  as  well  as  a  ruin,  inasmuch  as 
the  sisters  of  the  Sacred  Heart  have  erected  a  terribly 
modern  convent  here.  A  large  Gothic  doorway,  in  a 
high  fragment  of  ancient  wall,  admits  you  to  a  garden- 
like  enclosure,  of  great  extent,  from  which  you  are 


III.]  TOURS  I    MAEMOUTIER.  21 

further  introduced  into  an  extraordinarily  tidy  little 
parlor,  where  two  good  nuns  sit  at  work.  One  of  these 
came  out  with  me,  and  showed  me  over  the  place,  — 
a  very  definite  little  woman,  with  pointed  features,  an 
intensely  distinct  enunciation,  and  those  pretty  man 
ners  which  (for  whatever  other  teachings  it  may  be 
responsible)  the  Catholic  church  so  often  instils  into 
its  functionaries.  I  have  never  seen  a  woman  who  had 
got  her  lesson  better  than  this  little  trotting,  murmur 
ing,  edifying  nun.  The  interest  of  Marmoutier  to-day 
is  not  so  much  an  interest  of  vision,  so  to  speak,  as  an 
interest  of  reflection,  —  that  is,  if  you  choose  to  reflect 
(for  instance)  upon  the  wondrous  legend  of  the  seven 
sleepers  (you  may  see  where  they  lie  in  a  row),  who 
lived  together  —  they  were  brothers  and  cousins  —  in 
primitive  piety,  in  the  sanctuary  constructed  by  the 
blessed  Saint  Martin  (emulous  of  his  precursor,  Saint 
Gatianus),  in  the  face  of  the  hillside  that  overhung 
the  Loire,  and  who,  twenty-five  years  after  his  death, 
yielded  up  their  seven  souls  at  the  same  moment,  and 
enjoyed  the  curious  privilege  of  retaining  in  their 
faces,  in  spite  of  this  process,  the  rosy  tints  of  life. 
The  abbey  of  Marmoutier,  which  sprung  from  the 
grottos  in  the  cliff  to  which  Saint  Gatianus  and 
Saint  Martin  retired  to  pray,  was  therefore  the  crea 
tion  of  the  latter  worthy,  as  the  other  great  abbey,  in 
the  town  proper,  was  the  monument  of  his  repose. 
The  cliff  is  still  there  ;  and  a  winding  staircase,  in  the 
latest  taste,  enables  you  conveniently  to  explore  its 
recesses.  These  sacred  niches  are  scooped  out  of  the 
rock,  and  will  give  you  an  impression  if  you  cannot 
do  without  one.  You  will  feel  them  to  be  sufficiently 
venerable  when  you  learn  that  the  particular  pigeon- 


22  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [IV. 

hole  of  Saint  Gatianus,  the  first  Christian  missionary 
to  Gaul,  dates  from  the  third  century.  They  have 
been  dealt  with  as  the  Catholic  church  deals  with  most 
of  such  places  to-day ;  polished  and  furnished  up, 
labelled  and  ticketed,  —  edited,  with  notes,  in  short, 
like  an  old  book  The  process  is  a  mistake,  —  the 
early  editions  had  more  sanctity.  The  modern  build 
ings  (of  the  Sacred  Heart),  on  which  you  look  down 
from  these  points  of  vantage,  are  in  the  vulgar  taste 
which  seems  doomed  to  stamp  itself  on  all  new  Catho 
lic  work ;  but  there  was  nevertheless  a  great  sweet 
ness  in  the  scene.  The  afternoon  was  lovely,  and  it 
was  flushing  to  a  close.  The  large  garden  stretched 
beneath  us.  blooming  with  fruit  and  wine  and  suc 
culent  vegetables,  and  beyond  it  flowed  the  shining 
river.  The  air  was  still,  the  shadows  were  long,  and 
the  place,  after  all,  was  full  of  memories,  most  of 
which  might  pass  for  virtuous.  It  .certainly  was 
better  than  Plessis-les-Tours. 


IV. 


YOUR  business  at  Tours  is  to  make  excursions; 
and  if  you  make  them  all,  you  will  be  very  well 
occupied.  Touraine  is  rich  in  antiquities ;  and  an 
hour's  drive  from  the  town  in  almost  any  direction 
will  bring  you  to  the  knowledge  of  some  curious  frag 
ment  of  domestic  or  ecclesiastical  architecture,  some 
turreted  manor,  some  lonely  tower,  some  gabled  vil 
lage,  or  historic  site.  Even,  however,  if  you  do 
everything,  —  which  was  not  my  case,  —  you  cannot 
hope  to  relate  everything,  and,  fortunately  for  you, 


IV.]  BLOIS.  23 

the  excursions  divide  themselves  into  the  greater  and 
the  less.  You  may  achieve  most  of  the  greater  in  a 
week  or  two ;  but  a  summer  in  Touraine  (which,  by 
the  way,  must  be  a  charming  thing)  would  contain 
none  too  many  days  for  the  others.  If  you  come 
down  to  Tours  from  Paris,  your  best  economy  is  to 
spend  a  few  days  at  Blois,  where  a  clumsy,  but  rather 
attractive  little  inn,  on  the  edge  of  the  river,  will 
offer  you  a  certain  amount  of  that  familiar  and  inter 
mittent  hospitality  which  a  few  weeks  spent  in  the 
French  provinces  teaches  you  to  regard  as  the  high 
est  attainable  form  of  accommodation.  Such  an 
economy  I  was  unable  to  practise.  I  could  only  go 
to  Blois  (from  Tours)  to  spend  the  day ;  but  this  feat 
I  accomplished  twice  over.  It  is  a  very  sympathetic 
little  town,  as  we  say  nowadays,  and  one  might  easily 
resign  one's  self  to  a  week  there.  Seated  on  the 
north  bank  of  the  Loire,  it  presents  a  bright,  clean 
face  to  the  sun,  and  has  that  aspect  of  cheerful 
leisure  which  belongs  to  all  white  towns  that  reflect 
themselves  in  shining  waters.  It  is  the  water-front 
only  of  Blois,  however,  that  exhibits  this  fresh  com 
plexion  ;  the  interior  is  of  a  proper  brownness,  as 
befits  a  signally  historic  city.  The  only  disappoint 
ment  I  had  there  was  the  discovery  that  the  castle, 
which  is  the  special  object  of  one's  pilgrimage,  does 
not  overhang  the  river,  as  I  had  always  allowed  my 
self  to  understand.  It  overhangs  the  town,  but  it 
is  scarcely  visible  from  the  stream.  That  peculiai 
good  fortune  is  reserved  for  Amboise  and  Chaumont. 

The  Chateau  de  Blois  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
and  elaborate  of  all  the  old  royal  residences  of  this 
part  of  France,  and  I  suppose  it  should  have  all  the 


24  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [iV. 

honors  of  my  description.  As  you  cross  its  thresh 
old,  you  step  straight  into  the  brilliant  movement  of 
the  French  Eenaissance.  But  it  is  too  rich  to  de 
scribe,  —  I  can  only  touch  it  here  and  there.  It  must 
be  premised  that  in  speaking  of  it  as  one  sees  it  to 
day,  one  speaks  of  a  monument  unsparingly  restored. 
The  work  of  restoration  has  been  as  ingenious  as  it 
is  profuse,  but  it  rather  chills  the  imagination.  This 
is  perhaps  almost  the  first  thing  you  feel  as  you 
approach  the  castle  from  the  streets  of  the  town. 
These  little  streets,  as  they  leave  the  river,  have  pre 
tensions  to  romantic  steepness;  one  of  them,  in 
deed,  which  resolves  itself  into  a  high  staircase  with 
divergent  wings  (the  escalier  monumental),  achieved 
this  result  so  successfully  as  to  remind  me  vaguely 
— I  hardly  know  why  —  of  the  great  slope  of  the 
Capitol,  beside  the  Ara  Cceli,  at  Kome.  The  view  of 
that  part  of  the  castle  which  figures  to-day  as  the 
back  (it  is  the  only  aspect  I  had  seen  reproduced) 
exhibits  the  marks  of  restoration  with  the  greatest 
assurance.  The  long  facade,  consisting  only  of  bal 
conied  windows  deeply  recessed,  erects  itself  on  the 
summit  of  a  considerable  hill,  which  gives  a  fine, 
plunging  movement  to  its  foundations.  The  deep 
niches  of  the  windows  are  all  aglow  with  color. 
They  have  been  repainted  with  red  and  blue,  relieved 
with  gold  figures ;  and  each  of  them  looks  more  like 
the  royal  box  at  a  theatre  than  like  the  aperture  of  a 
palace  dark  with  memories.  For  all  this,  however, 
and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that,  as  in  some  others  of 
the  chateaux  of  Touraine,  (always  excepting  the  co 
lossal  Chambord,  which  is  not  in  Touraine ! )  there 
is  less  vastness  than  one  had  expected,  the  least 


rv.]  BLOIS.  25 

hospitable  aspect  of  Blois  is  abundantly  impressive. 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  lightness  and  grace  are  the  key 
note;  and  the  recesses  of  the  windows,  with  their 
happy  proportions,  their  sculpture,  and  their  color, 
are  the  empty  frames  of  brilliant  pictures.  They 
need  the  figure  of  a  Francis  I.  to  complete  them,  or 
of  a  Diane  de  Poitiers,  or  even  of  a  Henry  III. 
The  base  of  this  exquisite  structure  emerges  from  a 
bed  of  light  verdure,  which  has  been  allowed  to  mass 
itself  there,  and  which  contributes  to  the  springing 
look  of  the  walls;  while  on  the  right  it  joins  the 
most  modern  portion  of  the  castle,  —  the  building 
erected,  on  foundations  of  enormous  height  and  solid 
ity,  in  1635,  by  Gaston  d'  Orleans.  This  fine,  frigid 
mansion  —  the  proper  view  of  it  is  from  the  court 
within  —  is  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Francois  Man 
sard,  whom  a  kind  providence  did  not  allow  to  make 
over  the  whole  palace  in  the  superior  manner  of  his 
superior  age.  This  had  been  a  part  of  Gaston's  plan, 
—  he  was  a  blunderer  born,  and  this  precious  project 
was  worthy  of  him.  This  execution  of  it  would 
surely  have  been  one  of  the  great  misdeeds  of  his 
tory.  Partially  performed,  the  misdeed  is  not  alto 
gether  to  be  regretted ;  for  as  one  stands  in  the  court 
of  the  castle,  and  lets  one's  eye  wander  from  the 
splendid  wing  of  Francis  I. — which  is  the  last  word 
of  free  and  joyous  invention  —  to  the  ruled  lines  and 
blank  spaces  of  the  ponderous  pavilion  of  Mansard, 
one  makes  one's  reflections  upon  the  advantage,  in 
even  the  least  personal  of  the  arts,  of  having  some 
thing  to  say,  and  upon  the  stupidity  of  a  taste  which 
had  ended  by  becoming  an  aggregation  of  negatives. 
Gaston's  wing,  taken  by  itself,  has  much  of  the  Id 


26  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [IV. 

air  which  was  to  belong  to  the  architecture  of  Louis 
XIV. ;  but,  taken  in  contrast  to  its  flowering,  laugh 
ing,  living  neighbor,  it  marks  the  difference  between 
inspiration  and  calculation.  We  scarcely  grudge  it 
its  place,  however,  for  it  adds  a  price  to  the  rest  of 
the  chateau. 

We  have  entered  the  court,  by  the  way,  by  jump 
ing  over  the  walls.  The  more  orthodox  method  is  to 
follow  a  modern  terrace,  which  leads  to  the  left,  from 
the  side  of  the  chateau  that  I  began  by  speaking  of, 
and  passes  round,  ascending,  to  a  little  square  on  a 
considerably  higher  level,  which  is  not,  like  the  very 
modern  square  on  which  the  back  (as  I  have  called 
it)  looks  out,  a  thoroughfare.  This  small,  empty 
place,  oblong  in  form,  at  once  bright  and  quiet,  with 
a  certain  grass-grown  look,  offers  an  excellent  setting 
to  the  entrance-front  of  the  palace,  —  the  wing  of 
Louis  XII.  The  restoration  here  has  been  lavish ; 
but  it  was  perhaps  but  an  inevitable  reaction  against 
the  injuries,  still  more  lavish,  by  which  the  unfortu 
nate  building  had  long  been  overwhelmed.  It  had 
fallen  into  a  state  of  ruinous  neglect,  relieved  only 
by  the  misuse  proceeding  from  successive  generations 
of  soldiers,  for  whom  its  charming  chambers  served 
as  barrack-room.  Whitewashed,  mutilated,  dishon 
ored,  the  castle  of  Blois  may  be  said  to  have  escaped 
simply  with  its  life.  This  is  the  history  of  Amboise 
ae  well,  and  is  to  a  certain  extent  the  history  of 
Chambord.  Delightful,  at  any  rate,  was  the  refreshed 
facade  of  Louis  XII.  as  I  stood  and  looked  at  it  one 
bright  September  morning.  In  that  soft,  clear,  merry 
light  of  Touraine,  everything  shows,  every  tiling 
Speaks.  Charming  are  the  taste,  the  happy  proper- 


IV.]  BLOIS.  27 

tions,  the  color  of  this  beautiful  front,  to  which  the 
new  feeling  for  a  purely  domestic  architecture  —  an 
architecture  of  security  and  tranquillity,  in  which  art 
could  indulge  itself — gave  an  air  of  youth  and  glad 
ness.  It  is  true  that  for  a  long  time  to  come  the 
castle  of  Blois  was  neither  very  safe  nor  very  quiet; 
but  its  dangers  came  from  within,  from  the  evil  pas 
sions  of  its  inhabitants,  and  not  from  siege  or  inva 
sion.  The  front  of  Louis  XII.  is  of  red  brick,  crossed 
here  and  there  with  purple;  and  the  purple  slate 
of  the  high  roof,  relieved  with  chimneys  beautifully 
treated,  and  with  the  embroidered  caps  of  pinnacles 
and  arches,  with  the  porcupine  of  Louis,  the  ermine 
and  the  festooned  rope  which  formed  the  devices  of 
Anne  of  Brittany,  —  the  tone  of  this  rich-looking 
roof  carries  out  the  mild  glow  of  the  wall.  The 
wide,  fair  windows  look  as  if  they  had  expanded  to 
let  in  the  rosy  dawn  of  the  Renaissance.  Charming, 
for  that  matter,  are  the  windows  of  all  the  chateaux 
of  Touraine,  with  their  squareness  corrected  (as  it  is 
not  in  the  Tudor  architecture)  by  the  curve  of  the 
upper  corners,  which  makes  this  line  look  —  above 
the  expressive  aperture  —  like  a  pencilled  eyebrow. 
The  low  door  of  this  front  is  crowned  by  a  high, 
deep  niche,  in  which,  under  a  splendid  canopy,  stiffly 
astride  of  a  stiifly  draped  charger,  sits  in  profile  an 
image  of  the  good  King  Louis.  Good  as  he  had 
been,  —  the  father  of  his  people,  as  he  was  called  (I 
believe  he  remitted  various  taxes),  —  he  was  not  good 
enough  to  pass  muster  at  the  Revolution  ;  and  the 
effigy  I  have  just  described  is  no  more  than  a  repro 
duction  of  the  primitive  statue  demolished  at  that 
period 


28  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [iV. 

Pass  beneath  it  into  the  court,  and  the  sixteenth 
century  closes  round  you.  It  is  a  pardonable  flight 
of  fancy  to  say  that  the  expressive  faces  of  an  age 
in  which  human  passions  lay  very  near  the  surface 
seem  to  look  out  at  you  from  the  windows,  from  the 
balconies,  from  the  thick  foliage  of  the  sculpture. 
The  portion  of  the  wing  of  Louis  XII.  that  looks 
toward  the  court  is  supported  on  a  deep  arcade.  On 
your  right  is  the  wing  erected  by  Francis  I.,  the 
reverse  of  the  mass  of  building  which  you  see  on 
approaching  the  castle.  This  exquisite,  this  extrava 
gant,  this  transcendent  piece  of  architecture  is  the 
most  joyous  utterance  of  the  French  Eenaissance. 
It  is  covered  with  an  embroidery  of  sculpture,  in 
which  every  detail  is  worthy  of  the  hand  of  a  gold 
smith.  In  the  middle  of  it,  or  rather  a  little  to  the 
left,  rises  the  famous  winding  staircase  (plausibly, 
but  I  believe  not  religiously,  restored),  which  even 
the  ages  which  most  misused  it  must  vaguely  have 
admired.  It  forms  a  kind  of  chiselled  cylinder,  with 
wide  interstices,  so  that  the  stairs  are  open  to  the 
air.  Every  inch  of  this  structure,  of  its  balconies, 
its  pillars,  its  great  central  columns,  is  wrought  over 
with  lovely  images,  strange  and  ingenious  devices, 
prime  among  which  is  the  great  heraldic  salamander 
of  Francis  I.  The  salamander  is  everywhere  at  Blois, 
—  over  the  chimneys,  over  the  doors,  on  the  walls. 
This  whole  quarter  of  the  castle  bears  the  stamp  of 
that  eminently  pictorial  prince.  The  running  cornice 
along  the  top  of  the  front  is  like  an  unfolded,  an 
elongated,  bracelet.  The  windows  of  the  attic  are 
like  shrines  for  saints.  The  gargoyles,  the  medal 
lions,  the  statuettes,  the  festoons,  are  like  the  elab- 


IV.]  BLOIS.  29 

oration  of  some  precious  cabinet  rather  than  the 
details  of  a  building  exposed  to  the  weather  and  to 
the  ages.  In  the  interior  there  is  a  profusion  of  res 
toration,  and  it  is  ill  restoration  in  color.  This  has 
been,  evidently,  a  work  of  great  energy  and  cost, 
but  it  will  easily  strike  you  as  overdone.  The  uni 
versal  freshness  is  a  discord,  a  false  note;  it  seems  to 
light  up  the  dusky  past  with  an  unnatural  glare. 
Begun  in  the  reign  of  Louis  Philippe,  this  terrible 
process — the  more  terrible  always  the  more  you 
admit  that  it  has  been  necessary  —  has  been  carried 
so  far  that  there  is  now  scarcely  a  square  inch  of  the 
interior  that  has  the  color  of  the  past  upon  it.  It  is 
true  that  the  place  had  been  so  coated  over  with 
modern  abuse  that  something  was  needed  to  keep  it 
alive ;  it  is  only,  perhaps,  a  pity  that  the  restorers, 
not  content  with  saving  its  life,  should  have  under 
taken  to  restore  its  youth.  The  love  of  consistency, 
in  such  a  business,  is  a  dangerous  lure.  All  the  old 
apartments  have  been  rechristened,  as  it  were;  the 
geography  of  the  castle  has  been  re-established. 
The  guardrooms,  the  bedrooms,  the  closets,  the  ora 
tories,  have  recovered  their  identity.  Every  spot 
connected  with  the  murder  of  the  Duke  of  Guise  is 
pointed  out  by  a  small,  shrill  boy,  who  takes  you 
from  room  to  room,  and  who  has  learned  his  lesson 
in  perfection.  The  place  is  full  of  Catherine  de* 
Medici,  of  Henry  III.,  of  memories,  of  ghosts,  of 
echoes,  of  possible  evocations  and  revivals.  It  is 
covered  with  crimson  and  gold.  The  fireplaces  and 
the  ceilings  are  magnificent;  they  look  like  expensive 
"  sets  "  at  the  grand  opera. 

I  should  have  mentioned  that  below,  in  the  court, 


30  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [iV. 

the  front  of  the  wing  of  Gaston  d' Orleans  faces  you  as 
you  enter,  so  that  the  place  is  a  course  of  French 
history.  Inferior  in  beauty  and  grace  to  the  other 
portions  of  the  castle,  the  wing  is  yet  a  nobler  monu 
ment  than  the  memory  of  Gaston  deserves.  The 
second  of  the  sons  of  Henry  IV.,  —  who  was  no  more 
fortunate  as  a  father  than  as  a  husband,  —  younger 
brother  of  Louis  XIII.,  and  father  of  the  great 
Mademoiselle,  the  most  celebrated,  most  ambitious, 
most  self-complacent,  and  most  unsuccessful  file  a 
warier  in  French  history,  passed  in  enforced  retire 
ment  at  the  castle  of  Blois  the  close  of  a  life  of 
clumsy  intrigues  against  Cardinal  Kichelieu,  in  which 
his  rashness  was  only  equalled  by  his  pusillanimity 
and  his  ill-luck  by  his  inaccessibility  to  correction, 
and  which,  after  so  many  follies  and  shames,  was 
properly  summed  up  in  the  project  —  begun,  but  not 
completed  —  of  demolishing  the  beautiful  habitation 
of  his  exile  in  order  to  erect  a  better  one.  With 
Gaston  d'0rle"ans,  however,  who  lived  there  without 
dignity,  the  history  of  the  Chateau  de  Blois  declines. 
Its  interesting  period  is  that  of  the  wars  of  religion. 
It  was  the  chief  residence  of  Henry  III.,  and  the 
scene  of  the  principal  events  of  his  depraved  and 
dramatic  reign.  It  has  been  restored  more  than 
enough,  as  I  have  said,  by  architects  and  decorators ; 
the  visitor,  as  he  moves  through  its  empty  rooms, 
which  are  at  once  brilliant  and  ill-lighted  (they  have 
not  been  refurnished),  undertakes  a  little  restoration 
of  his  own.  His  imagination  helps  itself  from  the 
things  that  remain ;  he  tries  to  see  the  life  of  the 
sixteenth  century  in  its  form  and  dress,  —  its  turbu 
lence,  its  passions,  its  loves  and  hates,  its  treacheries, 


IV.]  BLOIS.  31 

falsities,  touches  of  faith,  its  latitude  of  personal  de 
velopment,  its  presentation  of  the  whole  nature,  its 
nobleness  of  costume,  charm  of  speech,  splendor  of 
taste,  unequalled  picturesqueness.  The  picture  is 
full  of  movement,  of  contrasted  light  and  dark 
ness,  full  altogether  of  abominations.  Mixed  up 
with  them  all  is  the  great  name  of  religion,  so  that 
the  drama  wants  nothing  to  make  it  complete. 
What  episode  was  ever  more  perfect  —  looked  at  as  a 
dramatic  occurrence  —  than  the  murder  of  the  Duke 
of  Guise  ?  The  insolent  prosperity  of  the  victim  ;  the 
weakness,  the  vices,  the  terrors,  of  the  author  of  the 
deed  ;  the  perfect  execution  of  the  plot ;  the  accumu 
lation  of  horror  in  what  followed  it,  —  give  it,  as  a 
crime,  a  kind  of  immortal  solidity. 

But  we  must  not  take  the  Chateau  de  Blois  too 
hard :  I  went  there,  after  all,  by  way  of  entertain 
ment.  If  among  these  sinister  memories  your  visit 
should  threaten  to  prove  a  tragedy,  there  is  an  excel 
lent  way  of  removing  the  impression.  You  may 
treat  yourself  at  Blois  to  a  very  cheerful  afterpiece. 
There  is  a  charming  industry  practised  there,  and 
practised  in  charming  conditions.  Follow  the  bright 
little  quay  down  the  river  till  you  get  quite  out  of  the 
town,  and  reach  the  point  where  the  road  beside  the 
Loire  becomes  sinuous  and  attractive,  turns  the  cor 
ner  of  diminutive  headlands,  and  makes  you  wonder 
what  is  beyond.  Let  not  your  curiosity  induce  you, 
however,  to  pass  by  a  modest  white  villa  which  over 
looks  the  stream,  enclosed  in  a  fresh  little  court ;  for 
here  dwells  an  artist,  —  an  artist  in  faience.  There 
is  no  sort  of  sign,  and  the  place  looks  peculiarly  pri 
vate.  But  if  you  ring  at  the  gate,  you  will  not  be 


32  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [iV. 

turned  away.  You  will,  on  the  contrary,  be  ushered 
upstairs  into  a  parlor — there  is  nothing  resembling 
a  shop  —  encumbered  with  specimens  of  remarkably 
handsome  pottery.  The  work  is  of  the  best,  —  a  care 
ful  reproduction  of  old  forms,  colors,  devices;  and 
the  master  of  the  establishment  is  one  of  those  com 
pletely  artistic  types  that  are  often  found  in  France. 
His  reception  is'  as  friendly  as  his  work  is  ingenious ; 
and  I  think  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  you  like 
the  work  the  better  because  he  has  produced  it 
His  vases,  cups  and  jars,  lamps,  platters,  plaques, 
with  their  brilliant  glaze,  their  innumerable  figures, 
their  family  likeness,  and  wide  variations,  are  scat 
tered  through  his  occupied  rooms ;  they  serve  at  once 
as  his  stock-in-trade  and  as  household  ornament. 
As  we  all  know,  this  is  an  age  of  prose,  of  machinery, 
of  wholesale  production,  of  coarse  and  hasty  pro 
cesses.  But  one  brings  away  from  the  establishment 
of  the  very  intelligent  M.  Ulysse  the  sense  of  a  less 
eager  activity  and  a  greater  search  for  perfection. 
He  has  but  a  few  workmen,  and  he  gives  them  plenty 
of  time.  The  place  makes  a  little  vignette,  leaves 
an  impression,  —  the  quiet  white  house  in  its  garden 
on  the  road  by  the  wide,  clear  river,  without  the 
smoke,  the  bustle,  the  ugliness,  of  so  much  of  our 
modern  industry.  It  ought  to  gratify  Mr.  Kuskiii. 


V.]  CHAMBORD.  33 


V. 

THE  second  time  I  went  to  Blois  I  took  a  carriage 
for  Chambord,  and  came  back  by  the  Chateau  do 
Cheverny  and  the  forest  of  Eussy,  —  a  charming  little 
expedition,  to  which  the  beauty  of  the  afternoon  (the 
finest  in  a  rainy  season  that  was  spotted  with  bright 
days)  contributed  not  a  little.  To  go  to  Chambord, 
you  cross  the  Loire,  leave  it  on  one  side,  and  strike 
away  through  a  country  in  which  salient  features  be 
come  less  and  less  numerous,  and  which  at  last  has 
no  other  quality  than  a  look  of  intense  and  peculiar 
rurality,  —  the  characteristic,  even  when  it  is  not  the 
charm,  of  so  much  of  the  landscape  of  France.  This 
is  not  the  appearance  of  wildness,  for  it  goes  with 
great  cultivation;  it  is  simply  the  presence  of  the 
delving,  drudging,  economizing  peasant.  But  it  is  a 
deep,  unrelieved  rusticity.  It  is  a  peasant's  landscape ; 
not,  as  in  England,  a  landlord's.  On  the  way  to  Cham 
bord  you  enter  the  flat  and  sandy  Sologne.  The  wide 
horizon  opens  out  like  a  great  potager,  without  inter 
ruptions,  without  an  eminence,  with  here  and  there  a 
long,  low  stretch  of  wood.  There  is  an  absence  of 
hedges,  fences,  signs  of  property;  everything  is  ab 
sorbed  in  the  general  flatness,  —  the  patches  of  vine 
yard,  the  scattered  cottages,  the  villages,  the  children 
(planted  and  staring  and  almost  always  pretty),  the 
women  in  the  fields,  the  white  caps,  the  faded  blouses, 
the  big  sabots.  At  the  end  of  an  hour's  drive  (they  as 
sure  you  at  Blois  that  even  with  two  horses  you  will 
spend  double  that  time),  I  passed  through  a  sort  of  gap 
in  a  wall,  which  does  duty  as  the  gateway  of  the  do- 

3 


34  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [v. 

main  of  an  exiled  pretender.  I  drove  along  a  straight 
avenue,  through  a  disfeatured  park,  —  the  park  of 
Chambord  has  twenty-one  miles  of  circumference,  — 
a  very  sandy,  scrubby,  melancholy  plantation,  in  which 
the  timber  must  have  been  cut  many  times  over  and 
is  to-day  a  mere  tangle  of  brushwood.  Here,  as  in  so 
many  spots  in  France,  the  traveller  perceives  that  he 
is  in  a  land  of  revolutions.  Nevertheless,  its  great 
extent  and  the  "long  perspective  of  its  avenues  give 
this  desolate  boskage  a  certain  majesty;  just  as  its 
shabbiness  places  it  in  agreement  with  one  of  the 
strongest  impressions  of  the  chateau.  You  follow  one 
of  these  long  perspectives  a  proportionate  time,  and  at 
last  you  see  the  chimneys  and  pinnacles  of  Chambord 
rise  apparently  out  of  the  ground.  The  nlling-in  of 
the  wide  moats  that  formerly  surrounded  it  has,  in 
vulgar  parlance,  let  it  down,  and  given  it  an  appear 
ance  of  top-heaviness  that  is  at  the  same  time  a  mag 
nificent  Orientalism.  The  towers,  the  turrets,  the 
cupolas,  the  gables,  the  lanterns,  the  chimneys,  look 
more  like  the  spires  of  a  city  than  the  salient  points 
of  a  single  building.  You  emerge  from  the  avenue 
and  find  yourself  at  the  foot  of  an  enormous  fantastic 
mass.  Chambord  has  a  strange  mixture  of  society 
and  solitude.  A  little  village  clusters  within  view  of 
its  stately  windows,  and  a  couple  of  inns  near  by  offer 
entertainment  to  pilgrims.  These  things,  of  course, 
are  incidents  of  the  political  proscription  which  hangs 
its  thick  veil  over  the  place.  Chambord  is  truly 
royal,  —  royal  in  its  great  scale,  its  grand  air,  its  indif 
ference  to  common  considerations.  If  a  cat  may  look 
at  a  king,  a  palace  may  look  at  a  tavern.  I  enjoyed 
my  visit  to  this  extraordinary  structure  as  much  as  if 


V.]  CHAMBORD.  35 

I  had  been  a  legitimist;  and  indeed  there  is  some 
thing  interesting  in  any  monument  of  a  great  system, 
any  bold  presentation  of  a  tradition. 

You  leave  your  vehicle  at  one  of  the  inns,  which  are 
very  decent  and  tidy,  and  in  which  every  one  is  very 
civil,  as  if  in  this  latter  respect  the  influence  of  the 
old  regime  pervaded  the  neighborhood,  and  you  walk 
across  the  grass  and  the  gravel  to  a  small  door,  —  a 
door  infinitely  subordinate  and  conferring  no  title  of 
any  kind  on  those  who  enter  it.  Here  you  ring  a  bell, 
which  a  highly  respectable  person  answers  (a  person 
perceptibly  affiliated,  again,  to  the  old  regime),  after 
which  she  ushers  you  across  a  vestibule  into  an  inner 
court.  Perhaps  the  strongest  impression  I  got  at 
Chambord  came  to  me  as  I  stood  in  this  court.  The 
woman  who  admitted  me  did  not  come  with  me; 
I  was  to  find  my  guide  somewhere  else.  The  spe 
cialty  of  Chambord  is  its  prodigious  round  towers. 
There  are,  I  believe,  no  less  than  eight  of  them, 
placed  at  each  angle  of  the  inner  and  outer  square  of 
buildings;  for  the  castle  is  in  the  form  of  a  larger 
structure  which  encloses  a  smaller  one.  One  of  these 
towers  stood  before  me  in  the  court;  it  seemed  to 
fling  its  shadow  over  the  place ;  while  above,  as  I 
looked  up,  the  pinnacles  and  gables,  the  enormous 
chimneys,  soared  into  the  bright  blue  air.  The  place 
was  empty  and  silent ;  shadows  of  gargoyles,  of  ex 
traordinary  projections,  were  thrown  across  the  clear 
gray  surfaces.  One  felt  that  the  whole  thing  was 
monstrous.  A  cicerone  appeared,  a  languid  young 
man  in  a  rather  shabby  livery,  and  led  me  about  with 
a  mixture  of  the  impatient  and  the  desultory,  of  con 
descension  and  humility.  I  do  not  profess  to  under- 


36  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [V. 

stand  the  plan  of  Chambord,  and  I  may  add  that  I  do 
not  even  desire  to  do  so ;  for  it  is  much  more  enter 
taining  to  think  of  it,  as  you  can  so  easily,  as  an 
irresponsible,  insoluble  labyrinth.  Within,  it  is  a 
wilderness  of  empty  chambers,  a  royal  and  romantic 
barrack.  The  exiled  prince  to  whom  it  gives  its  title 
has  not  the  means  to  keep  up  four  hundred  rooms ; 
he  contents  himself  with  preserving  the  huge  outside. 
The  repairs  of  the  prodigious  roof  alone  must  absorb 
a  large  part  of  his  revenue.  The  great  feature  of 
the  interior  is  the  celebrated  double  staircase,  rising 
straight  through  the  building,  with  two  courses  of 
steps,  so  that  people  may  ascend  and  descend  without 
meeting.  This  staircase  is  a  truly  majestic  piece  of 
humor ;  it  gives  you  the  note,  as  it  were,  of  Chambord. 
It  opens  on  each  landing  to  a  vast  guard-room,  in 
four  arms,  radiations  of  the  winding  shaft.  My  guide 
made  me  climb  to  the  great*  open- work  lantern  which, 
springing  from  the  roof  at  the  termination  of  the 
rotund  staircase  (surmounted  here  by  a  smaller  one), 
forms  the  pinnacle  of  the  bristling  crown  of  Chambord. 
This  lantern  is  tipped  with  a  huge  fleur-de-lis  in 
stone,  —  the  only  one,  I  believe,  that  the  Eevolution 
did  not  succeed  in  pulling  down.  Here,  from  narrow 
windows,  you  look  over  the  wide,  flat  country  and  the 
tangled,  melancholy  park,  with  the  rotation  of  its 
straight  avenues.  Then  you  walk  about  the  roof,  in 
a  complication  of  galleries,  terraces,  balconies,  through 
the  multitude  of  chimneys  and  gables.  This  roof, 
which  is  in  itself  a  sort  of  castle  in  the  air,  has  an 
extravagant,  fabulous  quality,  and  with  its  profuse  or 
namentation,  —  the  salamander  of  Francis  I.  is  a  con 
stant  motive,  —  its  lonely  pavements,  its  sunny  niches, 


V.]  CHAMBORD.  37 

the  balcony  that  looks  down  over  the  closed  and 
grass-grown  main  entrance,  a  strange,  half-sad,  half- 
brilliant  charm.  The  stone-work  is  covered  with 
fine  mould.  There  are  places  that  reminded  me  of 
some  of  those  quiet,  mildewed  corners  of  courts  and 
terraces,  into  which  the  traveller  who  wanders  through 
the  Vatican  looks  down  from  neglected  windows. 
They  show  you  two  or  three  furnished  rooms,  with 
Bourbon  portraits,  hideous  tapestries  from  the  ladies 
of  France,  a  collection  of  the  toys  of  the  enfant  du 
miracle,  all  military  and  of  the  finest  make.  "  Tout 
cela  fonctionne,"  the  guide  said  of  these  miniature 
weapons ;  and  I  wondered,  if  he  should  take  it  into 
his  head  to  fire  off  his  little  cannon,  how  much  harm 
the  Comte  de  Chambord  would  do. 

From  below,  the  castle  would  look  crushed  by 
the  redundancy  of  its  upper  protuberances  if  it  were 
not  for  the  enormous  girth  of  its  round  towers, 
which  appear  to  give  it  a  robust  lateral  development. 
These  towers,  however,  fine  as  they  are  in  their  way, 
struck  me  as  a  little  stupid ;  they  are  the  exaggera 
tion  of  an  exaggeration.  In  a  building  erected  after 
the  days  of  defence,  and  proclaiming  its  peaceful  char 
acter  from  its  hundred  embroideries  and  cupolas,  they 
seem  to  indicate  a  want  of  invention.  I  shall  risk 
the  accusation  of  bad  taste  if  I  say  that,  impressive 
as  it  is,  the  Chateau  de  Chambord  seemed  to  me  to 
have  altogether  a  little  of  that  quality  of  stupidity. 
The  trouble  is  that  it  represents  nothing  very  par 
ticular  ;  it  has  not  happened,  in  spite  of  sundry  vicis 
situdes,  to  have  a  very  interesting  history.  Compared 
with  that  of  Blois  and  Amboiso,  its  past  is  rathoi 
vacant ;  and  one  feels  to  a  certain  extent  the  contrast 


38  A  LITTLE   TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [V. 

between  its  pompous  appearance  and  its  spacious 
but  somewhat  colorless  annals.  It  had  indeed  the 
good  fortune  to  be  erected  by  Francis  I.,  whose  name 
by  itself  expresses  a  good  deal  of  history.  Why  he 
should  have  built  a  palace  in  those  sandy  plains  will 
ever  remain  an  unanswered  question,  for  kings  have 
never  been  obliged  to  give  reasons.  In  addition 
to  the  fact  that  the  country  was  rich  in  game  and 
that  Francis  was  a  passionate  hunter,  it  is  suggested 
by  M.  de  la  Saussaye,  the  author  of  the  very  com 
plete  little  history  of  Chambord  which  you  may  buy 
at  the  bookseller's  at  Blois,  that  he  was  governed  in 
his  choice  of  the  site  by  the  accident  of  a  charm 
ing  woman  having  formerly  lived  there.  The  Com- 
tesse  de  Thoury  had  a  manor  in  the  neighborhood,  and 
the  Comtesse  de  Thoury  had  been  the  object  of  a 
youthful  passion  on  the  part  of  the  most  susceptible 
of  princes  before  his  accession  to  the  throne.  This 
great  pile  was  reared,  therefore,  according  to  M.  de 
la  Saussaye,  as  a  souvenir  de  premieres  amours!  It 
is  certainly  a  very  massive  memento;  and  if  these 
tender  passages  were  proportionate  to  the  building 
that  commemorates  them,  they  were  tender  indeed. 
There  has  been  much  discussion  as  to  the  architect 
employed  by  Francis  I.,  and  the  honor  of  having  de 
signed  this  splendid  residence  has  been  claimed  for 
several  of  the  Italian  artists  who  early  in  the  six 
teenth  century  came  to  seek  patronage  in  France. 
It  seems  well  established  to-day,  however,  that  Cham 
bord  was  the  work  neither  of  Primaticcio,  of  Vig- 
nola,  nor  of  II  Eosso,  all  of  whom  have  left  some 
trace  of  their  sojourn  in  France ;  but  of  an  obscure 
yet  very  complete  genius,  Pierre  Nepveu,  known  as 


V.]  CHAMBORD.  39 

Pierre  Trinqueau,  who  is  desigimted  in  the  papers 
which  preserve  in  some  degree  the  history  of  the 
origin  of  the  edifice,  as  the  maistre  de  I'ceuvre  de  ma- 
ponnerie.  Behind  this  modest  title,  apparently,  we 
must  recognize  one  of  the  most  original  talents  of 
the  French  Eenaissance ;  and  it  is  a  proof  of  the 
vigor  of  the  artistic  life  of  that  period  that,  brilliant 
production  being  everywhere  abundant,  an  artist  of 
so  high  a  value  should  not  have  been  treated  by  his 
contemporaries  as  a  celebrity.  We  manage  things 
very  differently  to-day. 

The  immediate  successors  of  Francis  I.  continued 
to  visit  Chambord ;  but  it  was  neglected  by  Henry 
IV.,  and  was  never  afterwards  a  favorite  residence  of 
any  French  king.  Louis  XIV.  appeared  there  on 
several  occasions,  and  the  apparition  was  characteris 
tically  brilliant ;  but  Chambord  could  not  long  detain 
a  monarch  who  had  gone  to  the  expense  of  creating 
a  Versailles  ten  miles  from  Paris.  With  Versailles, 
Fontainebleau,  Saint-Germain,  and  Saint- Cloud  within 
easy  reach  of  their  capital,  the  later  French  sovereigns 
had  little  reason  to  take  the  air  in  the  dreariest  prov 
ince  of  their  kindgom.  Chambord  therefore  suffered 
from  royal  indifference,  though  in  the  last  century 
a  use  was  found  for  its  deserted  halls.  In  1725  it 
was  occupied  by  the  luckless  Stanislaus  Leszczynski, 
who  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  being  elected 
King  of  Poland  and  being  ousted  from  his  throne, 
and  who,  at  this  time  a  refugee  in  France,  had  found 
a  compensation  for  some  of  his  misfortunes  in  marry 
ing  his  daughter  to  Louis  XV.  He  lived  eight  years 
at  Chambord,  and  filled  up  the  moats  of  the  castle. 
In  1748  it  found  an  illustrious  tenant  in  the  person 


40  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [V. 

of  Maurice  de  Saxe,  the  victor  of  Fontenoy,  who, 
however,  two  years  after  he  had  taken  possession  of 
it,  terminated  a  life  which  would  have  been  longer 
had  he  been  less  determined  to  make  it  agreeable. 
The  Revolution,  of  course,  was  not  kind  to  Cham- 
bord.  It  despoiled  it  in  so  far  as  possible  of  every 
vestige  of  its  royal  origin,  and  swept  like  a  whirlwind 
through  apartments  to  which  upwards  of  two  cen 
turies  had  contributed  a  treasure  of  decoration  and 
furniture.  In  that  wild  blast  these  precious  tilings 
were  destroyed  or  forever  scattered.  In  1791  an  odd 
proposal  was  made  to  the  French  Government  by  a 
company  of  English  Quakers  who  had  conceived  the 
bold  idea  of  establishing  in  the  palace  a  manufacture 
of  some  peaceful  commodity  not  to-day  recorded. 
Napoleon  allotted  Chambord,  as  a  "  dotation,"  to  one 
of  his  marshals,  Berthier,  for  whose  benefit  it  was 
converted,  in  Napoleonic  fashion,  into  the  so-called 
principality  of  Wagram.  By  the  Princess  of  Wa- 
gram,  the  marshal's  widow,  it  was,  after  the  Restora 
tion,  sold  to  the  trustees  of  a  national  subscription 
which  had  been  established  for  the  purpose  of  pre 
senting  it  to  the  infant  Duke  of  Bordeaux,  then  pro 
spective  King  of  France.  The  presentation  was  duly 
made ;  but  the  Comte  de  Chambord,  who  had  changed 
his  title  in  recognition  of  the  gift,  was  despoiled  of  his 
property  by  the  Government  of  Louis  Philippe.  He 
appealed  for  redress  to  the  tribunals  of  his  country ; 
and  the  consequence  of  his  appeal  was  an  intermi 
nable  litigation,  by  which,  however,  finally,  after  the 
lapse  of  twenty-five  years,  he  was  established  in  his 
rights.  In  1871  he  paid  his  first  visit  to  the  domain 
which  had  been  offered  him  half  a  century  before,  a 


V.]  CHAMBORD.  41 

terra  of  which  he  had  spent  forty  years  in  exile.  It 
was  from  Chambord  that  he  dated  his  famous  let 
ter  of  the  5th  of  July  of  that  year,  —  the  letter,  di 
rected  to  his  so-called  subjects,  in  which  he  waves 
aloft  the  white  flag  of  the  Bourbons.  This  amazing 
epistle,  which  is  virtually  an  invitation  to  the  French 
people  to  repudiate,  as  their  national  ensign,  that 
immortal  tricolor,  the  flag  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
Empire,  under  which  they  have  won  the  glory  which 
of  all  glories  has  hitherto  been  dearest  to  them,  and 
which  is  associated  with  the  most  romantic,  the  most 
heroic,  the  epic,  the  consolatory,  period  of  their  his 
tory,  —  this  luckless  manifesto,  I  say,  appears  to  give 
the  measure  of  the  political  wisdom  of  the  excellent 
Henry  V.  It  is  the  most  factitious  proposal  ever  ad 
dressed  to  an  eminently  ironical  nation. 

On  the  whole,  Chambord  makes  a  great  impression  ; 
and  the  hour  I  was  there,  while  the  yellow  afternoon 
light  slanted  upon  the  September  woods,  there  was  a 
dignity  in  its  desolation.  It  spoke,  with  a  muffled 
but  audible  voice,  of  the  vanished  monarchy,  which 
had  been  so  strong,  so  splendid,  but  to-day  has  be 
come  a  sort  of  fantastic  vision,  like  the  cupolas  and 
chimneys  that  rose  before  me.  I  thought,  while  I 
lingered  there,  of  all  the  fine  things  it  takes  to  make 
up  such  a  monarchy ;  and  how  one  of  them  is  a  su 
perfluity  of  mouldering,  empty  palaces.  Chambord 
is  touching,  —  that  is  the  best  word  for  it;  and  if 
the  hopes  of  another  restoration  are  in  the  follies 
of  the  Eepublic,  a  little  reflection  on  that  eloquence 
of  ruin  ought  to  put  the  Republic  on  its  guard.  A 
sentimental  tourist  may  venture  to  remark  that  in 
the  presence  of  several  chateaux  which  appeal  in  this 


42  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [v. 

mystical  manner  to  the  retrospective  imagination,  it 
cannot  afford  to  be  foolish.  I  thought  of  all  this  as 
I  drove  back  to  Blois  by  the  way  of  the  Chateau  de 
Cheverny.  The  road  took  us  out  of  the  park  of 
Chambord,  but  through  a  region  of  flat  woodland, 
where  the  trees  were  not  mighty,  and  again  into  the 
prosy  plain  of  the  Sologne,  —  a  thankless  soil,  all  of 
it,  I  believe,  but  lately  much  amended  by  the  magic  of 
cheerful  French  industry  and  thrift.  The  light  had 
already  begun  to  fade,  and  my  drive  reminded  me  of 
a  passage  in  some  rural  novel  of  Madame  Sand.  I 
passed  a  couple  of  timber  and  plaster  churches,  which 
looked  very  old,  black,  and  crooked,  and  had  lumpish 
wooden  porches  and  galleries  encircling  the  base.  By 
the  time  I  reached  Cheverny,  the  clear  twilight  had 
approached.  It  was  late  to  ask  to  be  allowed  to  visit 
an  inhabited  house  ;  but  it  was  the  hour  at  which  I 
like  best  to  visit  almost  anything.  My  coachman  drew 
up  before  a  gateway,  in  a  high  wall,  which  opened 
upon  a  short  avenue,  along  which  I  took  my  way  on 
foot ;  the  coachmen  in  those  parts  being,  for  reasons 
best  known,  to  themselves,  mortally  averse  to  driving 
up  to  a  house.  I  answered  the  challenge  of  a  very 
tidy  little  portress,  who  sat,  in  company  with  a 
couple  of  children,  enjoying  the  evening  air  in  front 
of  her  lodge,  and  who  told  me  to  walk  a  little  further 
and  turn  to  the  right.  I  obeyed  her  to  the  letter, 
and  my  turn  brought  me  into  sight  of  a  house  as 
charming  as  an  old  manor  in  a  fairy  tale.  I  had  but 
a  rapid  and  partial  view  of  Cheverny  ;  but  that  view 
was  a  glimpse  of  perfection.  A  light,  sweet  mansion 
stood  looking  over  a  wide  green  lawn,  over  banks  of 
flowers  and  groups  of  trees.  It  had  a  striking  char- 


V.]  CIIAMBORD.  43 

acter  of  elegance,  produced  partly  by  a  series  of 
Renaissance  busts  let  into  circular  niches  in  the  fa- 
qade.  The  place  looked  so  private,  so  reserved,  that 
it  seemed  an  act  of  violence  to  ring,  a  stranger  and 
foreigner,  at  the  graceful  door.  But  if  I  had  not  rung 
I  should  be  unable  to  express  —  as  it  is  such  a  pleas 
ure  to  do  —  my  sense  of  the  exceeding  courtesy  with 
which  this  admirable  house  is  shown.  It  was  near 
the  dinner-hour,  —  the  most  sacred  hour  of  the  day ; 
but  I  was  freely  conducted  into  the  inhabited  apart 
ments.  They  are  extremely  beautiful.  What  I 
chiefly  remember  is  the  charming  staircase  of  white 
embroidered  stone,  and  the  great  salle  des  gardes  and 
cliartibre  a  couclier  du  roi  on  the  second  floor.  Che- 
verny,  built  in  1634,  is  of  a  much  later  date  than  the 
other  royal  residences  of  this  part  of  France ;  it  be 
longs  to  the  end  of  the  Renaissance,  and  has  a  touch 
of  the  rococo.  The  guard-room  is  a  superb  apartment ; 
and  as  it  contains  little  save  its  magnificent  ceiling 
and  fireplace  and  certain  dim  tapestries  on  its  walls, 
you  the  more  easily  take  the  measure  of  its  noble 
proportions.  The  servant  opened  the  shutters  of 
a  single  window,  and  the  last  rays  of  the  twilight 
slanted  into  the  rich  brown  gloom.  It  was  in  the 
same  picturesque  fashion  that  I  saw  the  bedroom 
(adjoining)  of  Henry  IV.,  where  a  legendary-looking 
bed,  draped  in  folds  long  unaltered,  defined  itself  in 
the  haunted  dusk.  Cheverny  remains  to  me  a  very 
charming,  a  partly  mysterious  vision.  I  drove  back 
to  Blois  in  the  dark,  some  nine  miles,  through  the 
forest  of  Russy,  which  belongs  to  the  State,  and 
which,  though  consisting  apparently  of  small  timber, 
looked  under  the  stars  sufficiently  vast  and  primeval. 


44  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [VI. 

There  was  a  damp  autumnal  smell  and  the  occasional 
sound  of  a  stirring  thing ;  and  as  I  moved  through  the 
evening  air  I  thought  of  Francis  I.  and  Henry  IV. 


VI. 


You  may  go  to  Amboise  either  from  Blois  or  from 
Tours ;  it  is  about  half-way  between  these  towns. 
The  great  point  is  to  go,  especially  if  you  have  put  it 
off  repeatedly  ;  and  to  go,  if  possible,  on  a  day  when 
the  great  view  of  the  Loire,  which  you  enjoy  from 
the  battlements  and  terraces,  presents  itself  under  a 
friendly  sky.  Three  persons,  of  whom  the  author  of 
these  lines  was  one,  spent  the  greater  part  of  a  perfect 
Sunday  morning  in  looking  at  it.  It  was  astonishing, 
in  the  course  of  the  rainiest  season  in  the  memory  of 
the  oldest  Tourangeau,  how  many  perfect  days  we 
found  to  our  hand.  The  town  of  Amboise  lies,  like 
Tours,  on  the  left  bank  of  the  river,  —  a  little  white- 
faced  town,  staring  across  an  admirable  bridge,  and 
leaning,  behind,  as  it  were,  against  the  pedestal  of  rock 
on  which  the  dark  castle  masses  itself.  The  town  is 
so  small,  the  pedestal  so  big,  and  the  castle  so  high 
and  striking,  that  the  clustered  houses  at  the  base  of 
the  rock  are  like  the  crumbs  that  have  fallen  from  a 
well-laden  table.  You  pass  among  them,  however,  to 
ascend  by  a  circuit  to  the  chateau,  which  you  attack, 
obliquely,  from  behind.  It  is  the  property  of  the 
Cornte  de  Paris,  another  pretender  to  the  French 
throne ;  having  come  to  him  remotely,  by  inheritance, 
from  his  ancestor,  the  Due  de  Penthievre,  who  toward 


VI.]  AMBOISE.  45 

the  close  of  the  last  century  bought  it  from  the  crown, 
which  had  recovered  it  after  a  lapse.  Like  the  castle 
of  Blois  it  has  been  injured  and  defaced  by  base  uses, 
but,  unlike  the  castle  of  Blois,  it  has  not  been  com 
pletely  restored.  "It  is  very,  very  dirty,  but  very 
curious," —  it  is  in  these  terms  that  I  heard  it  de 
scribed  by  an  English  lady,  who  was  generally  to  be 
found  engaged  upon  a  tattered  Tauchnitz  in  the  little 
salon  de  lecture  of  the  hotel  at  Tours.  The  descrip 
tion  is  not  inaccurate;  but  it  should  be  said  that  if 
part  of  the  dirtiness  of  Arnboise  is  the  result  of  its 
having  served  for  years  as  a  barrack  and  as  a  prison, 
part  of  it  comes  from  the  presence  of  restoring  stone 
masons,  who  have  woven  over  a  considerable  portion 
of  it  a  mask  of  scaffolding.  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
neatness  as  well,  and  the  restoration  of  some  of  the 
parts  seems  finished.  This  process,  at  Amboise, 
consists  for  the  most  part  of  simply  removing  the 
vulgar  excrescences  of  the  last  two  centuries. 

The  interior  is  virtually  a  blank,  the  old  apart 
ments  having  been  chopped  up  into  small  modern 
rooms ;  it  will  have  to  be  completely  reconstructed. 
A  worthy  woman,  with  a  military  profile  and  that 
sharp,  positive  manner  which  the  goodwives  who 
show  you  through  the  chateaux  of  Touraine  are 
rather  apt  to  have,  and  in  whose  high  respectability, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  frill  of  her  cap  and  the  cut  of  her 
thick  brown  dress,  my  companions  and  I  thought  we 
discovered  the  particular  note,  or  nuance,  of  Orlean- 
ism,  —  a  competent,  appreciative,  peremptory  person, 
I  say,  —  attended  us  through  the  particularly  delight 
ful  hour  we  spent  upon  the  ramparts  of  Amboise.  De 
nuded  and  disfeatured  within,  and  bristling  without 


46  A  LITTLE  TOUE  IN  FRANCE.  [VI. 

with  bricklayers'  ladders,  the  place  was  yet  extraor 
dinarily  impressive  and  interesting.  I  should  confess 
that  we  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  in  looking  at  the 
view.  Sweet  was  the  view,  and  magnificent ;  we  pre 
ferred  it  so  much  to  certain  portions  of  the  interior, 
and  to  occasional  effusions  of  historical  information, 
that  the  old  lady  with  the  profile  sometimes  lost 
patience  with  us.  We  laid  ourselves  open  to  the 
charge  of  preferring  it  even  to  the  little  chapel  of 
Saint  Hubert,  which  stands  on  the  edge  of  the  great 
terrace,  and  has,  over  the  portal,  a  wonderful  sculp 
ture  of  the  miraculous  hunt  of  that  holy  man.  In 
the  way  of  plastic  art  this  elaborate  scene  is  the  gem 
of  Amboise.  It  seemed  to  us  that  we  had  never  been 
in  a  place  where  there  are  so  many  points  of  van 
tage  to  look  down  from.  In  the  matter  of  position 
Amboise  is  certainly  supreme  among  the  old  houses 
of  the  Loire ;  and  I  say  this  with  a  due  recollection 
of  the  claims  of  Chaumont  and  of  Loches,  —  which 
latter,  by  the  way  (excuse  the  afterthought),  is  not  on 
the  Loire.  The  platforms,  the  bastions,  the  terraces, 
the  high-perched  windows  and  balconies,  the  hanging 
gardens  and  dizzy  crenellations,  of  this  complicated 
structure,  keep  you  in  perpetual  intercourse  with  an 
immense  horizon.  The  great  feature  of  the  place  is 
the  obligatory  round  tower  which  occupies  the  north 
ern  end  of  it,  and  which  has  now  been  completely  re 
stored.  It  is  of  astounding  size,  a  fortress  in  itself, 
and  contains,  instead  of  a  staircase,  a  wonderful  in 
clined  plane,  so  wide  and  gradual  that  a  coach  and 
four  may  be  driven  to  the  top.  This  colossal  cylinder 
has  to-day  no  visible  use ;  but  it  corresponds,  happily 
enough,  with  the  great  circle  of  the  prospect.  The 


VI.]  AMBOISE.  47 

gardens  of  Amboise,  perched  in  the  air,  covering  the 
irregular  remnants  of  the  platform  on  which  the  castle 
stands,  and  making  up  in  picturesqueness  what  they 
lack  in  extent,  constitute  of  course  but  a  scanty 
domain.  But  bathed,  as  we  found  them,  in  the  au 
tumn  sunshine,  and  doubly  private  from  their  aerial 
site,  they  offered  irresistible  opportunities  for  a  stroll, 
interrupted,  as  one  leaned  against  their  low  parapets, 
by  long,  contemplative  pauses.  I  remember,  in  par 
ticular,  a  certain  terrace,  planted  with  clipped  limes, 
upon  which  we  looked  down  from  the  summit  of  the 
big  tower.  It  seemed  from  that  point  to  be  absolutely 
necessary  to  one's  happiness  to  go  down  and  spend 
the  rest  of  the  morning  there  ;  it  was  an  ideal  place 
to  walk  to  and  fro  and  talk.  Our  venerable  con 
ductress,  to  whom  our  relation  had  gradually  become 
more  filial,  permitted  us  to  gratify  this  innocent  wish, 
—  to  the  extent,  that  is,  of  taking  a  turn  or  two  under 
the  mossy  tilleuls.  At  the  end  of  this  terrace  is  the 
low  door,  in  a  wall,  against  the  top  of  which,  in  1498, 
Charles  VIIL,  according  to  an  accepted  tradition, 
knocked  his  head  to  such  good  purpose  that  he  died. 
It  was  within  the  walls  of  Amboise  that  his  widow, 
Anne  of  Brittany,  already  in  mourning  for  three  chil 
dren,  two  of  whom  we  have  seen  commemorated  in 
sepulchral  marble  at  Tours,  spent  the  first  violence  of 
that  grief  which  was  presently  dispelled  by  a  union 
with  her  husband's  cousin  and  successor,  Louis  XII. 
Amboise  was  a  frequent  resort  of  the  French  Court 
during  the  sixteenth  century;  it  was  here  that  the 
young  Mary  Stuart  spent  sundry  hours  of  her  first 
marriage.  The  wars  of  religion  have  left  here  the  in 
effaceable  stain  which  they  left  wherever  they  passed. 


48  A  LITTLE   TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [VI. 

An  imaginative  visitor  at  Amboise  to-day  may  fancy 
that  the  traces  of  blood  are  mixed  with  the  red  rust 
on  the  crossed  iron  bars  of  the  grim-looking  balcony, 
to  which  the  heads  of  the  Huguenots  executed  on 
the  discovery  of  the  conspiracy  of  La  Eenaudie  are 
rumored  to  have  been  suspended.  There  was  room 
on  the  stout  balustrade  —  an  admirable  piece  of  work 
—  for  a  ghastly  array.  The  same  rumor  represents 
Catherine  de'  Medici  and  the  young  queen  as  watch 
ing  from  this  balcony  the  noyades  of  the  captured 
Huguenots  in  the  Loire.  The  facts  of  history  are  bad 
enough ;  the  fictions  are,  if  possible,  worse  ;  but  there 
is  little  doubt  that  the  future  Queen  of  Scots  learnt 
the  first  lessons  of  life  at  a  horrible  school.  If  in 
subsequent  years  she  was  a  prodigy  of  innocence  and 
virtue,  it  was  not  the  fault  of  her  whilom  mother-in- 
law,  of  her  uncles  of  the  house  of  Guise,  or  of  the  ex 
amples  presented  to  her  either  at  the  windows  of  the 
castle  of  Amboise  or  in  its  more  private  recesses. 

It  was  difficult  to  believe  in  these  dark  deeds,  how 
ever,  as  we  looked  through  the  golden  morning  at  the 
placidity  of  the  far-shining  Loire.  The  ultimate  con 
sequence  of  this  spectacle  was  a  desire  to  follow  the 
river  as  far  as  the  castle  of  Chaumont.  It  is  true 
that  the  cruelties  practised  of  old  at  Amboise  might 
have  seemed  less  phantasmal  to  persons  destined  to 
suffer  from  a  modern  form  of  inhumanity.  The  mis 
tress  of  the  little  inn  at  the  base  of  the  castle-rock  — 
it  stands  very  pleasantly  beside  the  river,  and  we  had 
breakfasted  there  —  declared  to  us  that  the  Chateau 
de  Chaumont,  which  is  often  during  the  autumn 
closed  to  visitors,  was  at  that  particular  moment 
standing  so  wide  open  to  receive  us  that  it  was  our 


VI.]  CHAUMONT.  49 

duty  to  hire  one  of  her  carriages  and  drive  thither 
with  speed.  This  assurance  was  so  satisfactory  that 
we  presently  found  ourselves  seated  in  this  wily 
woman's  most  commodious  vehicle,  and  rolling,  nei 
ther  too  fast  nor  too  slow,  along  the  margin  of  the 
Loire.  The  drive  of  about  an  hour,  beneath  constant 
clumps  of  chestnuts,  was  charming  enough  to  have 
been  taken  for  itself ;  and  indeed,  when  we  reached 
Chaumont,  we  saw  that  our  reward  was  to  be  sim 
ply  the  usual  reward  of  virtue,  —  the  consciousness 
of  having  attempted  the  right.  The  Chateau  de 
Chaumont  was  inexorably  closed  ;  so  we  learned  from 
a  talkative  lodge-keeper,  who  gave  what  grace  she 
could  to  her  refusal.  This  good  woman's  dilemma 
was  almost  touching  ;  she  wished  to  reconcile  two 
impossibles.  The  castle  was  not  to  be  visited,  for 
the  family  of  its  master  was  staying  there ;  and  yet 
she  was  loath  to  turn  away  a  party  of  which  she  was 
good  enough  to  say  that  it  had  a  grand  genre  ;  for,  as 
she  also  remarked,  she  had  her  living  to  earn.  She 
tried  to  arrange  a  compromise,  one  of  the  elements 
of  which  was  that  we  should  descend  from  our 
carriage  and  trudge  up  a  hill  which  would  bring  us  to 
a  designated  point,  where,  over  the  paling  of  the 
garden,  we  might  obtain  an  oblique  and  surreptitious 
view  of  a  small  portion  of  the  castle  walls.  This 
suggestion  led  us  to  inquire  (of  each  other)  to  what 
degree  of  baseness  it  is  allowed  to  an  enlightened 
lover  of  the  picturesque  to  resort,  in  order  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  a  feudal  chateau.  One  of  our  trio  decided, 
characteristically,  against  any  form  of  derogation ;  so 
she  sat  in  the  carriage  and  sketched  some  object  that 
was  public  property,  while  her  two  companions,  who 

4 


50  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [VI. 

were  not  so  proud,  trudged  up  a  muddy  ascent  which 
formed  a  kind  of  back-stairs.  It  is  perhaps  no 
more  than  they  deserved  that  they  were  disappointed. 
Chaumont  is  feudal,  if  you  please ;  but  the  modern 
spirit  is  in  possession.  It  forms  a  vast  clean-scraped 
mass,  with  big  round  towers,  ungarnished  with  a  leaf 
of  ivy  or  a  patch  of  moss,  surrounded  by  gardens 
of  moderate  extent  (save  where  the  muddy  lane  of 
which  I  speak  passes  near  it),  and  looking  rather  like 
an  enormously  magnified  villa.  The  great  merit  of 
Chaumont  is  its  position,  wllich  almost  exactly  re 
sembles  that  of  Amboise  ;  it  sweeps  the  river  up  and 
down,  and  seems  to  look  over  half  the  province. 
This,  however,  was  better  appreciated  as,  after  coming 
down  the  hill  and  re-entering  the  carriage,  we  drove 
across  the  long  suspension-bridge  which  crosses  the 
Loire  just  beyond  the  village,  and  over  which  we 
made  our  way  to  the  small  station  of  Onzain,  at  the 
farther  end,  to  take  the  train  back  to  Tours.  Look 
back  from  the  middle  of  this  bridge ;  the  whole 
picture  composes,  as  the  painters  say.  The  towers, 
the  pinnacles,  the  fair  front  of  the  chateau,  perched 
above  its  fringe  of  garden  and  the  rusty  roofs  of  the 
village,  and  facing  the  afternoon  sky,  which  is  re 
flected  also  in  the  great  stream  that  sweeps  below,  — 
all  this  makes  a  contribution  to  your  happiest 
memories  of  Touraine. 


VII.]  CIIENONCEAUX.  51 


VII. 

WE  never  went  to  Chinon ;  it  was  a  fatality.  We 
planned  it  a  dozen  times ;  but  the  weather  interfered, 
or  the  trains  didn't  suit,  or  one  of  the  party  was 
fatigued  with  the  adventures  of  the  day  before.  This 
excursion  was  so  much  postponed  that  it  was  finally 
postponed  to  everything.  Besides,  we  had  to  go 
to  Chenonceaux,  to  Azay-le-Eideau,  to  Langeais,  to 
Loches.  So  I  have  not  the  memory  of  Chinon;  I 
have  only  the  regret.  But  regret,  as  well  as  memory, 
has  its  visions;  especially  when,  like  memory,  it  is 
assisted  by  photographs.  The  castle  of  Chinon  in 
this  form  appears  to  me  as  an  enormous  ruin,  a 
mediseval  fortress,  of  the  extent  almost  of  a  city.  It 
covers  a  hill  above  the  Vienne,  and  after  being 
impregnable  in  its  time  is  indestructible  to-day.  (I 
risk  this  phrase  in  the  face  of  the  prosaic  truth. 
Chinon,  in  the  days  when  it  was  a  prize,  more  than 
once  suffered  capture,  and  at  present  it  is  crumbling 
inch  by  inch.  It  is  apparent,  however,  I  believe,  that 
these  inches  encroach  little  upon  acres  of  masonry.) 
It  was  in  the  castle  that  Jeanne  Dare  had  her  first 
interview  with  Charles  VII.,  and  it  is  in  the  town 
that  Franqois  Rabelais  is  supposed  to  have  been  born. 
To  the  castle,  moreover,  the  lover  of  the  picturesque 
is  earnestly  recommended  to  direct  his  steps.  But 
one  cannot  do  everything,  and  I  would  rather  have 
missed  Chinon  than  Chenonceaux.  Fortunate  ex 
ceedingly  were  the  few  hours  that  we  passed  at  this 
exquisite  residence. 

"In   1747,"   says   Jean- Jacques   Rousseau,  in  his 


52  A  LITTLE  TOUK  IN  FRANCE.  [VIL 

"Confessions,"  "we  went  to  spend  the  autumn  in 
Touraine,  at  the  Chateau  of  Chenonceaux,  a  royal  resi 
dence  upon  the  Cher,  built  by  Henry  II.  for  Diana 
of  Poitiers,  whose  initials  are  still  to  be  seen  there, 
and  now  in  possession  of  M.  Dupin,  the  farmer- 
general.  We  amused  ourselves  greatly  in  this  fine 
spot;  the  living  was  of  the  best,  and  I  became  as  fat 
as  a  monk.  We  made  a  great  deal  of  music,  and 
acted  comedies." 

This  is  the  only  description  that  Rousseau  gives 
of  one  of  the  most  romantic  houses  in  France,  and 
of  an  episode  that  must  have  counted  as  one  of  the 
most  agreeable  in  his  uncomfortable  career.  The 
eighteenth  century  contented  itself  with  general 
epithets ;  and  when  Jean-Jacques  has  said  that  Che 
nonceaux  was  a  "  beau  lieu,"  he  thinks  himself  ab 
solved  from  further  characterization.  We  later  sons 
of  time  have,  both  for  our  pleasure  and  our  pain, 
invented  the  fashion  of  special  terms,  and  I  am  afraid 
that  even  common  decency  obliges  me  to  pay  some 
larger  tribute  than  this  to  the  architectural  gem  of 
Touraine.  Fortunately  I  can  discharge  my  debt 
with  gratitude.  In  going  from  Tours  you  leave  the 
valley  of  the  Loire  and  enter  that  of  the  Cher,  and  at 
the  end  of  about  an  hour  you  see  the  turrets  of  the 
castle  on  your  right,  among  the  trees,  down  in  the 
meadows,  beside  the  quiet  little  river.  The  station 
and  the  village  are  about  ten  minutes'  walk  from  the 
chateau,  and  the  village  contains  a  very  tidy  inn, 
where,  if  you  are  not  in  too  great  a  hurry  to  com 
mune  with  the  shades  of  the  royal  favorite  and  the 
jealous  queen,  you  will  perhaps  stop  and  order  a 
dinner  to  be  ready  for  you  in  the  evening.  A 


VII.]  CHENONCEAUX.  53 

straight,  tall  avenue  leads  to  the  grounds  of  the 
castle ;  what  I  owe  to  exactitude  compels  me  to  add 
that  it  is  crossed  by  the  railway-line.  The  place  is 
so  arranged,  however,  that  the  chateau  need  know 
nothing  of  passing  trains,  —  which  pass,  indeed, 
though  the  grounds  are  not  large,  at  a  very  sufficient 
distance.  I  may  add  that  the  trains  throughout  this 
part  of  France  have  a  noiseless,  desultory,  dawdling, 
almost  stationary  quality,  which  makes  them  less  of 
an  offence  than  usual.  It  was  a  Sunday  afternoon, 
and  the  light  was  yellow,  save  under  the  trees  of  the 
avenue,  where,  in  spite  of  the  waning  of  September, 
it  was  duskily  green.  Three  or  four  peasants,  in 
festal  attire,  were  strolling  about.  On  a  bench  at 
the  beginning  of  the  avenue,  sat  a  man  with  two 
women.  As  I  advanced  with  my  companions  he 
rose,  after  a  sudden  stare,  and  approached  me  with  a 
smile,  in  which  (to  be  Johnsonian  for  a  moment) 
certitude  was  mitigated  by  modesty  and  eagerness 
was  embellished  with  respect.  He  came  toward  me 
with  a  salutation  that  I  had  seen  before,  and  I  am 
happy  to  say  that  after  an  instant  I  ceased  to^be 
guilty  of  the  brutality  of  not  knowing  where.  There 
was  only  one  place  in  the  world  where  people  smile 
like  that,  —  only  one  place  where  the  art  of  salutation 
has  that  perfect  grace.  This  excellent  creature  used 
to  crook  his  arm,  in  Venice,  when  I  stepped  into  my 
gondola;  and  I  now  laid  my  hand  on  that  member 
with  the  familiarity  of  glad  recognition;  for  it  was 
only  surprise  that  had  kept  me  even  for  a  moment  from 
accepting  the  genial  Francesco  as  an  ornament  of  the 
landscape  of  Touraine.  What  on  earth  —  the  phrase 
is  the  right  one  —  was  a  Venetian  gondolier  doing  at 


54  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [VH. 

Chenonceaux  ?  He  had  been  brought  from  Venice, 
gondola  and  all,  by  the  mistress  of  the  charming 
house,  to  paddle  about  on  the  Cher.  Our  meeting 
was  affectionate,  though  there  was  a  kind  of  violence 
in  seeing  him  so  far  from  home.  He  was  too  well 
dressed,  too  well  fed ;  he  had  grown  stout,  and  his 
nose  had  the  tinge  of  good  claret.  He  remarked  that 
the  life  of  the  household  to  which  he  had  the  honor 
to  belong  was  that  of  a  casa  regia  ;  which  must  have 
been  a  great  change  for  poor  Checco,  whose  habits  in 
Venice  were  not  regal.  However,  he  was  the  sym 
pathetic  Checco  still ;  and  for  five  minutes  after  I  left 
him  I  thought  less  about  the  little  pleasure-house  by 
the  Cher  than  about  the  palaces,  of  the  Adriatic. 

But  attention  was  not  long  in  coming  round  to  the 
charming  structure  that  presently  rose  before  us. 
The  pale  yellow  front  of  the  chateau,  the  small  scale 
of  which  is  at  first  a  surprise,  rises  beyond  a  consider 
able  court,  at  the  entrance  of  which  a  massive  and 
detached  round  tower,  with  a  turret  on  its  brow  (a 
relic  of  the  building  that  preceded  the  actual  villa), 
appears  to  keep  guard.  This  court  is  not  enclosed — 
or  is  enclosed,  at  least,  only  by  the  gardens,  portions 
of  which  are  at  present  in  a  state  of  violent  reforma 
tion.  Therefore,  though  Chenonceaux  has  no  great 
height,  its  delicate  facade  stands  up  boldly  enough. 
This  facade,  one  of  the  most  finished  things  in  Tour- 
aine,  consists  of  two  stories,  surmounted  by  an  attic 
which,  as  so  often  in  the  buildings  of  the  French 
Kenaissance,  is  the  richest  part  of  the  house.  The 
high-pitched  roof  contains  three  windows  of  beautiful 
design,  covered  with  embroidered  caps  and  flowering 
into  crocketed  spires.  The  window  above  the  door 


VII.]  CHENONCEAUX.  55 

is  deeply  niched;  it  opens  upon  a  balcony  made 
in  the  form  of  a  double  pulpit,  —  one  of  the  most 
charming  features  of  the  front.  Chenonceaux  is  not 
large,  as  I  say,  but  into  its  delicate  compass  is 
packed  a  great  deal  of  history,  —  history  which  dif 
fers  from  that  of  Amboise  and  Blois  in  being  of  the 
private  and  sentimental  kind.  The  echoes  of  the 
place,  faint  and  far  as  they  are  to-day,  are  not  po 
litical,  but  personal.  Chenonceaux  dates,  as  a  resi 
dence,  from  the  year  1515,  when  the  shrewd  Thomas 
Bohier,  a  public  functionary  who  had  grown  rich  in 
handling  the  finances  of  Normandy,  and  had  acquired 
the  estate  from  a  family  which,  after  giving  it  many 
feudal  lords,  had  fallen  into  poverty,  erected  the 
present  structure  on  the  foundations  of  an  old  mill. 
The  design  is  attributed,  with  I  know  not  what  jus 
tice,  to  Pierre  Nepveu,  alias  Trinqueau,  the  audacious 
architect  of  Chambord.  On  the  death  of  Bohier  the 
house  passed  to  his  son,  who,  however,  was  forced,  un 
der  cruel  pressure,  to  surrender  it  to  the  crown,  in 
compensation  for  a  so-called  deficit  in  the  accounts  of 
the  late  superintendent  of  the  treasury.  Francis  I. 
held  the  place  till  his  death;  but  Henry  II.,  on 
ascending  the  throne,  presented  it  out  of  hand  to 
that  mature  charmer,  the  admired  of  two  genera 
tions,  Diana  of  Poitiers.  Diana  enjoyed  it  till 
the  death  of  her  protector;  but  when  this  event 
occurred,  the  widow  of  the  monarch,  who  had  been 
obliged  to  submit  in  silence,  for  years,  to  the  ascend 
ency  of  a  rival,  took  the  most  pardonable  of  all  the 
revenges  with  which  the  name  of  Catherine  de' 
Medici  is  associated,  and  turned  her  out-of-doors. 
Diana  was  not  in  want  of  refuges,  and  Catherine 


56  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE. 

went  through  the  form  of  giving  her  Chaumont  in 
exchange ;  but  there  was  only  one  Chenonceaux. 
Catherine  devoted  herself  to  making  the  place  more 
completely  unique.  The  feature  that  renders  it  sole 
of  its  kind  is  not  appreciated  till  you  wander  round 
to  either  side  of  the  house.  If  a  certain  springing 
lightness  is  the  characteristic  of  Chenouceaux,  if  it 
bears  in  every  line  the  aspect  of  a  place  of  recrea 
tion,  —  a  place  intended  for  delicate,  chosen  pleasures, 
— nothing  can  confirm  this  expression  better  than  the 
strange,  unexpected  movement  with  which,  from  be 
hind,  it  carries  itself  across  the  river.  The  earlier 
building  stands  in  the  water;  it  had  inherited  the 
foundations  of  the  mill  destroyed  by  Thomas  Bohier. 
The  first  step,  therefore,  had  been  taken  upon  solid 
piles  of  masonry ;  and  the  ingenious  Catherine  — 
she  was  a  raffinee  —  simply  proceeded  to  take  the 
others.  She  continued  the  piles  to  the  opposite 
bank  of  the  Cher,  and  over  them  she  threw  a  long, 
straight  gallery  of  two  stories.  This  part  of  the 
chateau,  which  looks  simply  like  a  house  built  upon 
a  bridge  and  occupying  its  entire  length,  is  of  course 
the  great  curiosity  of  Chenonceaux.  It  forms  on 
each  floor  a  charming  corridor,  which,  within,  is 
illuminated  from  either  side  by  the  flickering  river- 
light.  The  architecture  of  these  galleries,  seen 
from  without,  is  less  elegant  than  that  of  the  main 
building,  but  the  aspect  of  the  whole  thing  is  de 
lightful.  I  have  spoken  of  Chenonceaux  as  a  "  villa," 
using  the  word  advisedly,  for  the  place  is  neither  a 
castle  nor  a  palace.  It  is  a  very  exceptional  villa, 
but  it  has  the  villa-quality,  —  the  look  of  being  in 
tended  for  life  in  common.  This  look  is  not  at  all 


VII.]  CHENONCEAUX.  57 

contradicted  by  the  wing  across  the  Cher,  which  only 
suggests  intimate  pleasures,  as  the  French  say,  — 
walks  in  pairs,  on  rainy  days ;  games  and  dances  on 
autumn  nights ;  together  with  as  much  as  may  be 
of  moonlighted  dialogue  (or  silence)  in  the  course 
of  evenings  more  genial  still,  in  the  well-marked 
recesses  of  windows. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  such  things  took  place  there 
in  the  last  century,  during  the  kindly  reign  of  Mon 
sieur  and  Madame  Dupin.  This  period  presents  itself 
as  the  happiest  in  the  annals  of  Chenonceaux.  I 
know  not  what  festive  train  the  great  Diana  may  have 
led,  and  my  imagination,  I  am  afraid,  is  only  feebly 
kindled  by  the  records  of  the  luxurious  pastimes 
organized  on  the  banks  of  the  Cher  by  the  terrible 
daughter  of  the  Medici,  whose  appreciation  of  the 
good  things  of  life  was  perfectly  consistent  with  a 
failure  to  perceive  why  others  should  live  to  enjoy 
them.  The  best  society  that  ever  assembled  there 
was  collected  at  Chenonceaux  during  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  This  was  surely,  in  France 
at  least,  the  age  of  good  society,  the  period  when  it 
was  well  for  appreciative  people  to  have  been  born. 
Such  people  should  of  course  have  belonged  to  the 
fortunate  few,  and  not  to  the  miserable  many  ;  for  the 
prime  condition  of  a  society  being  good  is  that  it  be 
not  too  large.  The  sixty  years  that  preceded  the 
French  Revolution  were  the  golden  age  of  fireside  talk 
and  of  those  pleasures  which  proceed  from  the  pres 
ence  of  women  in  whom  the  social  art  is  both  instinc 
tive  and  acquired.  The  women  of  that  period  were, 
above  all,  good  company ;  the  fact  is  attested  by  a 
thousand  documents.  Chenonceaux  offered  a  perfect 


58  A  LITTLE  TOUK   IN  FRANCE.  [VII. 

setting-  to  free  conversation  ;  and  infinite  joyous  dis 
course  must  have  mingled  with  the  liquid  murmur  of 
the  Cher.  Claude  Dupin  was  not  only  a  great  man 
of  business,  but  a  man  of  honor  and  a  patron  of 
knowledge;  and  his  wife  was  gracious,  clever,  and 
wise.  They  had  acquired  this  famous  property  by 
purchase  (from  one  of  the  Bourbons ;  for  Chenon- 
ceaux,  for  two  centuries  after  the  death  of  Cath 
erine  de'  Medici,  remained  constantly  in  princely 
hands),  and  it  was  transmitted  to  their  son,  Dupin 
de  Francueil,  grandfather  of  Madame  George  Sand. 
This  lady,  in  her  Correspondence,  lately  published, 
describes  a  visit  that  she  paid,  more  than  thirty  years 
ago,  to  those  members  of  her  family  who  were  still  in 
possession.  The  owner  of  Chenonceaux  to-day  is  the 
daughter  of  an  Englishman  naturalized  in  France. 
But  I  have  wandered  far  from  my  story,  which  is 
simply  a  sketch  of  the  surface  of  the  place.  Seen 
obliquely,  from  either  side,  in  combination  with  its 
bridge  and  gallery,  the  chateau  is  singular  and  fan 
tastic,  a  striking  example  of  a  wilful  and  capricious 
conception.  Unfortunately,  all  caprices  are  not  so 
graceful  and  successful,  and  I  grudge  the  honor  of 
this  one  to  the  false  and  blood-polluted  Catherine. 
(To  be  exact,  I  believe  the  arches  of  the  bridge  were 
laid  by  the  elderly  Diana.  It  was  Catherine,  however, 
who  completed  the  monument.)  Within,  the  house 
has  been,  as  usual,  restored.  The  staircases  and  ceil 
ings,  in  all  the  old  royal  residences  of  this  part  of 
France,  are  the  parts  that  have  suffered  least ;  many 
of  them  have  still  much  of  the  life  of  the  old  time 
about  them.  Some  of  the  chambers  of  Chenonceaux, 
however,  encumbered  as  they  are  with  modern  detail, 


VII.]  CHENONCEAUX.  59 

derive  a  sufficiently  haunted  and  suggestive  look  from 
the  deep  setting  of  their  beautiful  windows,  which 
thickens  the  shadows  and  makes  dark  corners.  There 
is  a  charming  little  gothic  chapel,  with  its  apse  hang 
ing  over  the  water,  fastened  to  the  left  flank  of  the 
house.  Some  of  the  upper  balconies,  which  look 
along  the  outer  face  of  the  gallery,  and  either  up  or 
clown  the  river,  are  delightful  protected  nooks.  We 
walked  through  the  lower  gallery  to  the  other  bank 
of  the  Cher ;  this  fine  apartment  appeared  to  be  for 
the  moment  a  purgatory  of  ancient  furniture.  It  ter 
minates  rather  abruptly ;  it  simply  stops,  with  a  blank 
wall.  There  ought,  of  course,  to  have  been  a  pavilion 
here,  though  I  prefer  very  much  the  old  defect  to  any 
modern  remedy.  The  wall  is  not  so  blank,  however, 
but  that  it  contains  a  door  which  opens  on  a  rusty 
drawbridge.  This  drawbridge  traverses  the  small 
gap  which  divides  the  end  of  the  gallery  from  the 
bank  of  the  stream.  The  house,  therefore,  does  not 
literally  rest  on  opposite  edges  of  the  Cher,  but  rests 
on  one  and  just  fails  to  rest  on  the  other.  The  pavil 
ion  would  have  made  that  up ;  but  after  a  moment  we 
ceased  to  miss  this  imaginary  feature.  We  passed  the 
little  drawbridge,  and  wandered  awhile  beside  the 
river.  From  this  opposite  bank  the  mass  of  the  cha 
teau  looked  more  charming  than  ever ;  and  the  little 
peaceful,  lazy  Cher,  where  two  or  three  men  were 
fishing  in  the  eventide,  flowed  under  the  clear  arches 
and  between  the  solid  pedestals  of  the  part  that 
spanned  it,  with  the  softest,  vaguest  light  on  its 
bosom.  This  was  the  right  perspective ;  we  were 
looking  across  the  river  of  time.  The  whole  scene 
was  deliciously  mild.  The  moon  came  up  j.  we  passed 


60  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [vil. 

back  through  the  gallery  and  strolled  about  a  little 
longer  in  the  gardens.  It  was  veiy  still.  I  met  my 
old  gondolier  in  the  twilight.  He  showed  me  his  gon 
dola  ;  but  I  hated,  somehow,  to  see  it  there.  I  don't 
like,  as  the  French  say,  to  meler  les  genres.  A  gon 
dola  in  a  little  flat  French  river  ?  The  image  was 
not  less  irritating,  if  less  injurious,  than  the  spectacle 
of  a  steamer  in  the  Grand  Canal,  which  had  driven 
me  away  from  Venice  a  year  and  a  half  before.  We 
took  our  way  back  to  the  Grand  Monarque,  and  waited 
in  the  little  inn-parlor  for  a  late  train  to  Tours.  We 
were  not  impatient,  for  we  had  an  excellent  dinner  to 
occupy  us ;  and  even  after  we  had  dined  we  were  still 
content  to  sit  awhile  and  exchange  remarks  upon  the 
superior  civilization  of  France.  Where  else,  at  a  vil 
lage  inn,  should  we  have  fared  so  well  ?  Where  else 
should  we  have  sat  down  to  our  refreshment  without 
condescension  ?  There  were  two  or  three  countries 
in  which  it  would  not  have  been  happy  for  us  to  ar 
rive  hungry,  on  a  Sunday  evening,  at  so  modest  an 
hostelry.  At  the  little  inn  at  Chenonceaux  the  cuisine 
was  not  only  excellent,  but  the  service  was  graceful. 
We  were  waited  on  by  mademoiselle  and  her  mamma ; 
it  was  so  that  mademoiselle  alluded  to  the  elder  lady, 
as  she  uncorked  for  us  a  bottle  of  Vouvray  mousseux. 
We  were  very  comfortable,  very  genial;  we  even 
went  so  far  as  to  say  to  each  other  that  Vouvray 
mousseux  was  a  delightful  wine.  From  this  opinion, 
indeed,  one  of  our  trio  differed ;  but  this  member  of 
the  party  had  already  exposed  herself  to  the  charge 
of  being  too  fastidious,  by  declining  to  descend  from 
the  carriage  at  Chaumont  and  take  that  back-stairs 
view  of  the  castle. 


VIII.  AZAY-LE-KIDEAU.  61 


VIII. 

WITHOUT  fastidiousness,  it  was  fair  to  declare,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  the  little  inn  at  Azay-le-Eideau 
was  very  bad.  It  was  terribly  dirty,  and  it  was  in 
charge  of  a  fat  meg  ere  whom  the  appearance  of  four 
trustful  travellers  —  we  were  four,  with  an  illustri 
ous  fourth,  on  that  occasion  —  roused  apparently  to 
fury.  I  attached  great  importance  to  this  incongru 
ous  hostess,  for  she  uttered  the  only  uncivil  words 
I  heard  spoken  (in  connection  with  any  business  of 
my  own)  during  a  tour  of  some  six  weeks  in  France. 
Breakfast  not  at  Azay-le-Eideau,  therefore,  too  trust 
ful  traveller  ;  or  if  you  do  so,  be  either  very  meek  or 
very  bold.  Breakfast  not,  save  under  stress  of  cir 
cumstance  ;  but  let  no  circumstance  whatever  pre 
vent  you  from  going  to  see  the  admirable  chateau, 
which  is  almost  a  rival  of  Chenonceaux.  The  village 
lies  close  to  the  gates,  though  after  you  pass  these 
gates  you  leave  it  well  behind.  A  little  avenue,  as 
at  Chenonceaux,  leads  to  the  house,  making  a  pretty 
vista  as  you  approach  the  sculptured  doorway.  Azay 
is  a  most  perfect  and  beautiful  thing ;  I  should  place 
it  third  in  any  list  of  the  great  houses  of  this  part 
of  France  in  which  these  houses  should  be  ranked 
according  to  charm.  For  beauty  of  detail  it  comes 
after  Blois  and  Chenonceaux  ;  but  it  comes  before  Am- 
boise  and  Chambord.  On  the  other  hand,  of  course, 
it  is  inferior  in  majesty  to  either  of  these  vast 
structures.  Like  Chenonceaux,  it  is  a  watery  place, 
though  it  is  more  meagrely  moated  than  the  little 
chateau  on  the  Cher.  It  consists  of  a  large  square 


62  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [VIII. 

corps  de  logis,  with  a  round  tower  at  each  angle,  rising 
out  of  a  somewhat  too  slumberous  pond.  The  water 
—  the  water  of  the  Indre  —  surrounds  it,  but  it  is 
only  on  one  side  that  it  bathes  its  feet  in  the  moat. 
On  one  of  the  others  there  is  a  little  terrace,  treated 
as  a  garden,  and  in  front  there  is  a  wide  court,  formed 
by  a  wing  which,  on  the  right,  comes  forward.  This 
front,  covered  with  sculptures,  is  of  the  richest,  state 
liest  effect.  The  court  is  approached  by  a  bridge 
over  the  pond,  and  the  house  would  reflect  itself  in 
this  wealth  of  water  if  the  water  were  a  trifle  less 
opaque.  But  there  is  a  certain  stagnation  —  it  af 
fects  more  senses  than  one  —  about  the  picturesque 
pools  of  Azay.  On  the  hither  side  of  the  bridge  is 
a  garden,  overshadowed  by  fine  old  sycamores,  —  a 
garden  shut  in  by  greenhouses  and  by  a  fine  last- 
century  gateway,  flanked  with  twin  lodges.  Beyond 
the  chateau  and  the  standing  waters  behind  it  is  a 
so-called  pare,  which,  however,  it  must  be  confessed, 
has  little  of  park-like  beauty.  The  old  houses  (many 
of  them,  that  is)  remain  in  France  ;  but  the  old  tim 
ber  does  not  remain,  and  the  denuded  aspect  of  the 
few  acres  that  surround  the  chateaux  of  Touraine  is 
pitiful  to  the  traveller  who  has  learned  to  take  the 
measure  of  such  things  from  the  manors  and  castles 
of  England.  The  domain  of  the  lordly  Chaumont  is 
that  of  an  English  suburban  villa ;  and  in  that  and 
in  other  places  there  is  little  suggestion,  in  the 
untended  aspect  of  walk  and  lawns,  of  the  vigilant 
British  gardener.  The  manor  of  Azay,  as  seen  to-day, 
dates  from  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  century  ; 
and  the  industrious  Abbe  Chevalier,  in  his  very 
entertaining  though  slightly  rose-colored  book  on 


VIII.]  AZAY-LE-RIDEAU.  63 

Touraine,1  speaks  of  it  as  "  perhaps  the  purest  expres 
sion  of  the  belle  Renaissance  franqoise"  "Its  height," 
he  goes  on, "  is  divided  between  two  stories,  terminat 
ing  under  the  roof  in  a  projecting  entablature  which 
imitates  a  row  of  machicolations.  Carven  chimneys 
and  tall  dormer  windows,  covered  with  imagery,  rise 
from  the  roofs ;  turrets  on  brackets,  of  elegant  shape, 
hang  with  the  greatest  lightness  from  the  angles  of 
the  building.  The  soberness  of  the  main  lines,  the 
harmony  of  the  empty  spaces  and  those  that  are 
filled  out,  the  prominence  of  the  crowning  parts,  the 
delicacy  of  all  the  details,  constitute  an  enchanting 
whole."  And  then  the  Abbe"  speaks  of  the  admirable 
staircase  which  adorns  the  north  front,  and  which, 
with  its  extension  inside,  constitutes  the  principal 
treasure  of  Azay.  The  staircase  passes  beneath  one 
of  the  richest  of  porticos,  —  a  portico  over  which  a 
monumental  salamander  indulges  in  the  most  deco 
rative  contortions.  The  sculptured  vaults  of  stone 
which  cover  the  windings  of  the  staircase  within,  the 
fruits,  flowers,  ciphers,  heraldic  signs,  are  of  the 
noblest  effect.  The  interior  of  the  chateau  is  rich, 
comfortable,  extremely  modern ;  but  it  makes  no 
picture  that  compares  with  its  external  face,  about 
which,  with  its  charming  proportions,  its  profuse 
yet  not  extravagant  sculpture,  there  is  something 
very  tranquil  and  pure.  I  took  a  particular  fancy 
to  the  roof,  high,  steep,  old,  with  its  slope  of  blu 
ish  slate,  and  the  way  the  weather-worn  chimneys 
seemed  to  grow  out  of  it,  like  living  things  out  of  a 
deep  soil.  The  only  defect  of  the  house  is  the  blank- 
ness  and  bareness  of  its  walls,  which  have  none  of 

1  Promenades  pittoresques  en  Touraine.     Tours  :  1869. 


64  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [iX. 

those  delicate  parasites  attached  to  them  that  one 
likes  to  see  on  the  surface  of  old  dwellings.  It  is 
true  that  this  bareness  results  in  a  kind  of  silvery 
whiteness  of  complexion,  which  carries  out  the  tone 
of  the  quiet  pools  and  even  that  of  the  scanty  and 
shadeless  park. 


IX. 


I  HARDLY  know  what  to  say  about  the  tone  of 
Langeais,  which,  though  I  have  left  it  to  the  end  of 
my  sketch,  formed  the  objective  point  of  the  first  ex 
cursion  I  made  from  Tours.  Langeais  is  rather  dark 
and  gray  ;  it  is  perhaps  the  simplest  and  most  severe 
of  all  the  castles  of  the  Loire.  I  don't  know  why  I 
should  have  gone  to  see  it  before  any  other,  unless  it 
be  because  I  remembered  the  Duchesse  de  Langeais, 
who  figures  in  several  of  Balzac's  novels,  and  found 
this  association  very  potent.  The  Duchesse  de  Lan 
geais  is  a  somewhat  transparent  fiction ;  but  the 
castle  from  which  Balzac  borrowed  the  title  of  his 
heroine  is  an  extremely  solid  fact.  My  doubt  just 
above  as  to  whether  I  should  pronounce  it  exception 
ally  gray  came  from  my  having  seen  it  under  a  sky 
which  made  most  things  look  dark.  I  have,  however, 
a  very  kindly  memory  of  that  moist  and  melancholy 
afternoon,  which  was  much  more  autumnal  than 
many  of  the  days  that  folio  wed  it.  Langeais  lies 
down  the  Loire,  near  the  river,  on  the  opposite  side 
from  Tours,  and  to  go  to  it  you  will  spend  half  an 
hour  in  the  train.  You  pass  on  the  way  the  Chateau 
de  Luynes,  which,  with  its  round  towers  catching 


IX.]  LANGEAIS.  65 

the  afternoon  light,  looks  uncommonly  well  on  a  hill 
at  a  distance ;  you  pass  also  the  ruins  of  the  castle 
of  Cinq-Mars,  the  ancestral  dwelling  of  the  young 
favorite  of  Louis  XIII.,  the  victim  of  Eichelieu,  the 
hero  of  Alfred  de  Vigny's  novel,  which  is  usually  rec 
ommended  to  young  ladies  engaged  in  the  study  of 
French.  Langeais  is  very  imposing  and  decidedly 
sombre ;  it  marks  the  transition  from  the  architec 
ture  of  defence  to  that  of  elegance.  It  rises,  massive 
and  perpendicular,  out  of  the  centre  of  the  village  to 
which  it  gives  its  name,  and  which  it  entirely  domi 
nates  ;  so  that,  as  you  stand  before  it,  in  the  crooked 
and  empty  street,  there  is  no  resource  for  you  but  to 
stare  up  at  its  heavy  overhanging  cornice  and  at  the 
huge  towers  surmounted  with  extinguishers  of  slate. 
If  you  follow  this  street  to  the  end,  however,  you  en 
counter  in  abundance  the  usual  embellishments  of  a 
French  village  :  little  ponds  or  tanks,  with  women  on 
their  knees  on  the  brink,  pounding  and  thumping  a 
lump  of  saturated  linen ;  brown  old  crones,  the  tone 
of  whose  facial  hide  makes  their  nightcaps  (worn 
by  day)  look  dazzling;  little  alleys  perforating  the 
thickness  of  a  row  of  cottages,  and  showing  you  be 
hind,  as  a  glimpse,  the  vividness  of  a  green  garden. 
In  the  rear  of  the  castle  rises  a  hill  which  must  for 
merly  have  been  occupied  by  some  of  its  appurtenan 
ces,  and  which  indeed  is  still  partly  enclosed  within  its 
court.  You  may  walk  round  this  eminence,  which, 
with  the  small  houses  of  the  village  at  its  base,  shuts 
in  the  castle  from  behind.  The  enclosure  is  not 
defiantly  guarded,  however ;  for  a  small,  rough  path, 
which  you  presently  reach,  leads  up  to  an  open  gate. 
This  gate  admits  you  to  a  vague  and  rather  limited 

5 


66  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [iX. 

pare,  which  covers  the  crest  of  the  hill,  and  through 
which  you  may  walk  into  the  gardens  of  the  castle. 
These  gardens,  of  small  extent,  confront  the  dark 
walls  with  their  brilliant  parterres,  and,  covering  the 
gradual  slope  of  the  hill,  form,  as  it  were,  the  fourth 
side  of  the  court.  This  is  the  stateliest  view  of  the 
chateau,  which  looks  to  you  sufficiently  grim  and 
gray  as,  after  asking  leave  of  a  neat  young  wo 
man  who  sallies  out  to  learn  your  errand,  you  sit 
there  on  a  garden  bench  and  take  the  measure  of 
the  three  tall  towers  attached  to  this  inner  front  and 
forming  severally  the  cage  of  a  staircase.  The  huge 
bracketed  cornice  (one  of  the  features  of  Langeais), 
which  is  merely  ornamental,  as  it  is  not  machicolated, 
though  it  looks  so,  is  continued  on  the  inner  face  as 
well.  The  whole  thing  has  a  fine  feudal  air,  though 
it  was  erected  on  the  ruins  of  feudalism. 

The  main  event  in  the  history  of  the  castle  is  the 
marriage  of  Anne  of  Brittany  to  her  first  husband, 
Charles  VIII.,  which  took  place  in  its  great  hall  in 
1491.  Into  this  great  hall  we  were  introduced  by 
the  neat  young  woman,  —  into  this  great  hall  and 
into  sundry  other  halls,  winding  staircases,  galleries, 
chambers.  The  cicerone  of  Langeais  is  in  too  great  a 
hurry ;  the  fact  is  pointed  out  in  the  excellent  Guide- 
Joanne.  This  ill-dissimulated  vice,  however,  is  to  be 
observed,  in  the  country  of  the  Loire,  in  every  one 
who  carries  a  key.  It  is  true  that  at  Langeais  there 
is  no  great  occasion  to  indulge  in  the  tourist's  weak 
ness  of  dawdling;  for  the  apartments,  though  they 
contain  many  curious  odds  and  ends  of  antiquity, 
are  not  of  first-rate  interest.  They  are  cold  and  musty, 
indeed,  with  that  touching  smell  of  old  furniture,  as 


IX.]  LANGEAIS.  67 

all  apartments  should  be  through  which  the  insatiate 
American  wanders  in  the  rear  of  a  bored  domestic, 
pausing  to  stare  at  a  faded  tapestry  or  to  read  the 
name  on  the  frame  of  some  simpering  portrait. 

To  return  to  Tours  my  companion  and  I  had  counted 
on  a  train  which  (as  is  not  uncommon  in  France) 
existed  only  in  the  "  Indicateur  des  Chemins  de  Fer ; " 
and  instead  of  waiting  for  another  we  engaged  a  ve 
hicle  to  take  us  home.  A  sorry  carriole  or  patache  it 
proved  to  be,  with  the  accessories  of  a  lumbering 
white  mare  and  a  little  wizened,  ancient  peasant, 
who  had  put  on,  in  honor  of  the  occasion,  a  new 
blouse  of  extraordinary  stiffness  and  blueness.  We 
hired  the  trap  of  an  energetic  woman  who  put  it 
"  to "  with  her  own  hands ;  women  in  Touraine  and 
the  Blesois  appearing  to  have  the  best  of  it  in  the 
business  of  letting  vehicles,  as  well  as  in  many  other 
industries.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  branch  of  human 
activity  in  which  one  is  not  liable,  in  France,  to  find 
a  woman  engaged.  Women,  indeed,  are  not  priests  ; 
but  priests  are,  more  or  less,  women.  They  are  not 
in  the  army,  it  may  be  said ;  but  then  they  are  the 
army.  They  are  very  formidable.  In  France  one 
must  count  with  the  women.  The  drive  back  from 
Langeais  to  Tours  was  long,  slow,  cold ;  we  had  an 
occasional  spatter  of  rain.  But  the  road  passes  most 
of  the  way  close  to  the  Loire,  and  there  was  some 
thing  in  our  jog-trot  through  the  darkening  land,  be 
side  the  flowing  river,  which  it  was  very  possible  to 
enjoy. 


68  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE,  [x. 


THE  consequence  of  my  leaving  to  the  last  my  lit 
tle  mention  of  Loches  is  that  space  and  opportunity 
fail  me ;  and  yet  a  brief  and  hurried  account  of  that 
extraordinary  spot  would  after  all  be  in  best  agree 
ment  with  my  visit.  We  snatched  a  fearful  joy,  my 
companion  and  I,  the  afternoon  we  took  the  train  for 
Loches.  The  weather  this  time  had  been  terribly 
against  us :  again  and  again  a  day  that  promised  fair 
became  hopelessly  foul  after  lunch.  At  last  we  de 
termined  that  if  we  could  not  make  this  excursion 
in  the  sunshine,  we  would  make  it  with  the  aid  of 
our  umbrellas.  We  grasped  them  firmly  and  started 
for  the  station,  where  we  were  detained  an  uncon 
scionable  time  by  the  evolutions,  outside,  of  certain 
trains  laden  with  liberated  (and  exhilarated)  con 
scripts,  who,  their  term  of  service  ended,  were  about 
to  be  restored  to  civil  life.  The  trains  in  Touraine 
are  provoking ;  they  serve  as  little  as  possible  for  ex 
cursions.  If  they  convey  you  one  way  at  the  right 
hour,  it  is  on  the  condition  of  bringing  you  back  at 
the  wrong ;  they  either  allow  you  far  too  little  time 
to  examine  the  castle  or  the  ruin,  or  they  leave  you 
planted  in  front  of  it  for  periods  that  outlast  curi 
osity.  They  are  perverse,  capricious,  exasperating. 
It  was  a  question  of  our  having  but  an  hour  or  two 
at  Loches,  and  we  could  ill  afford  to  sacrifice  to  acci 
dents.  One  of  the  accidents,  however,  was  that  the 
rain  stopped  before  we  got  there,  leaving  behind  it  a 
moist  mildness  of  temperature  and  a  cool  and  lower 
ing  sky,  wrhich  were  in  perfect  agreement  with  the 


X.]  LOCIIES.  69 

gray  old  city.  Loches  is  certainly  one  of  the  greatest 
impressions  of  the  traveller  in  central  France,  —  the 
largest  cluster  of  curious  things  that  presents  itself 
to  his  sight.  It  rises  above  the  valley  of  the  Indre, 
the  charming  stream  set  in  meadows  and  sedges, 
which  wanders  through  the  province  of  Berry  and 
through  many  of  the  novels  of  Madame  George  Sand  ; 
lifting  from  the  summit  of  a  hill,  which  it  covers  to 
the  base,  a  confusion  of  terraces,  ramparts,  towers, 
and  spires.  Having  but  little  time,  as  I  say,  we 
scaled  the  hill  amain,  and  wandered  briskly  through 
this  labyrinth  of  antiquities.  The  rain  had  decidedly 
stopped,  and  save  that  we  had  our  train  on  our 
minds,  we  saw  Loches  to  the  best  advantage.  We 
enjoyed  that  sensation  with  which  the  conscientious 
tourist  is  —  or  ought  to  be  —  well  acquainted,  and  for 
which,  at  any  rate,  he  has  a  formula  in  his  rough- 
and-ready  language.  We  "experienced,"  as  they  say, 
(most  odious  of  verbs!)  an  "agreeable  disappoint 
ment."  We  were  surprised  and  delighted ;  we  had  not 
suspected  that  Loches  was  so  good. 

I  hardly  know  what  is  best  there  :  the  strange  and 
impressive  little  collegial  church,  with  its  romanesque 
atrium  or  narthex,  its  doorways  covered  with  primi 
tive  sculpture  of  the  richest  kind,  its  treasure  of  a 
so-called  pagan  altar,  embossed  with  fighting  warriors, 
its  three  pyramidal  domes,  so  unexpected,  so  sinister, 
which  I  have  not  met  elsewhere,  in  church  architec 
ture  ;  or  the  huge  square  keep,  of  the  eleventh  cen 
tury,  —  the  most  cliff-like  tower  I  remember,  whose 
immeasurable  thickness  I  did  not  penetrate;  or  the 
subterranean  mysteries  of  two  other  less  striking  but 
not  less  historic  dungeons,  into  which  a  terribly 


70  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [x. 

imperative  little  cicerone  introduced  us,  with  the 
aid  of  downward  ladders,  ropes,  torches,  warnings, 
extended  hands,  and  many  fearful  anecdotes,  —  all 
in  impervious  darkness.  These  horrible  prisons  of 
Loches,  at  an  incredible  distance  below  the  daylight, 
were  a  favorite  resource  of  Louis  XL,  and  were  for 
the  most  part,  I  believe,  constructed  by  him.  One  of 
the  towers  of  the  castle  is  garnished  with  the  hooks 
or  supports  of  the  celebrated  iron  cage  in  which  he 
confined  the  Cardinal  La  Balue,  who  survived  so 
much  longer  than  might  have  been  expected  this 
extraordinary  mixture  of  seclusion  and  exposure.  All 
these  things  form  part  of  the  castle  of  Loches,  whose 
enormous  enceinte  covers  the  whole  of  the  top  of  the 
hill,  and  abounds  in  dismantled  gateways,  in  crooked 
passages,  in  winding  lanes  that  lead  to  postern  doors, 
in  long  facades  that  look  upon  terraces  interdicted  to 
the  visitor,  who  perceives  with  irritation  that  they 
command  magnificent  views.  These  views  are  the 
property  of  the  sub-prefect  of  the  department,  who 
resides  at  the  Chateau  de  Loches,  and  who  has  also 
the  enjoyment  of  a  garden  —  a  garden  compressed 
and  curtailed,  as  those  of  old  castles  that  perch  on 
hill-tops  are  apt  to  be  —  containing  a  horse-chestnut 
tree  of  fabulous  size,  a  tree  of  a  circumference  so 
vast  and  so  perfect  that  the  whole  population  of 
Loches  might  sit  in  concentric  rows  beneath  its 
boughs.  The  gem  of  the  place,  however,  is  neither 
the  big  marronier,  nor  the  collegial  church,  nor  the 
mighty  dungeon,  nor  the  hideous  prisons  of  Louis  XL ; 
it  is  simply  the  tomb  of  Agnes  Sorel,  la  Idle  des 
belles,  so  many  years  the  mistress  of  Charles  VII. 
She  was  buried,  in  1450,  in  the  collegial  church, 


X.]  LOCHES.  71 

whence,  in  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  her 
remains,  with  the  monument  that  marks  them,  were 
transferred  to  one  of  the  towers  of  the  castle.  She 
has  always,  I  know  not  with  what  justice,  enjoyed  a 
fairer  fame  than  most  ladies  who  have  occupied  her 
position,  and  this  fairness  is  expressed  in  the  delicate 
statue  that  surmounts  her  tomb.  It  represents  her 
lying  there  in  lovely  demureness,  her  hands  folded 
with  the  best  modesty,  a  little  kneeling  angel  at 
either  side  of  her  head,  and  her  feet,  hidden  in  the 
folds  of  her  decent  robe,  resting  upon  a  pair  of 
couchant  lambs,  innocent  reminders  of  her  name. 
Agnes,  however,  was  not  lamb-like,  inasmuch  as, 
according  to  popular  tradition  at  least,  she  exerted 
herself  sharply  in  favor  of  the  expulsion  of  the 
English  from  France.  It  is  one  of  the  suggestions  of 
Loches  that  the  young  Charles  VII.,  hard  put  to  it 
as  he  was  for  a  treasury  and  a  capital,  —  "  le  roi  de 
Bourges,"  he  was  called  at  Paris,  —  was  yet  a  rather 
privileged  mortal,  to  stand  up  as  he  does  before 
posterity  between  the  noble  Joan  and  the  gentille 
Agnes ;  deriving,  however,  much  more  honor  from  one 
of  these  companions  than  from  the  other.  Almost  as 
delicate  a  relic  of  antiquity  as  this  fascinating  tomb 
is  the  exquisite  oratory  of  Anne  of  Brittany,  among 
the  apartments  of  the  castle  the  only  chamber  worthy 
of  note.  This  small  room,  hardly  larger  than  a 
closet,  and  forming  part  of  the  addition  made  to  the 
edifice  by  Charles  VIII.,  is  embroidered  over  with 
the  curious  and  remarkably  decorative  device  of  the 
ermine  and  festooned  cord.  The  objects  in  them 
selves  are  not  especially  graceful ;  but  the  constant 
repetition  of  the  figure  on  the  walls  and  ceiling  pro- 


72  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XL 

duces  an  effect  of  richness,  in  spite  of  the  modern 
whitewash  with  which,  if  I  remember  rightly,  they 
have  been  endued.  The  little  streets  of  Loches 
wander  crookedly  down  the  hill,  and  are  full  of 
charming  pictorial  "  bits : "  an  old  town -gate,  passing 
under  a  mediaeval  tower,  which  is  ornamented  by 
gothic  windows  and  the  empty  niches  of  statues ;  a 
meagre  but  delicate  hotel  de  mile,  of  the  Eenaissance, 
nestling  close  beside  it ;  a  curious  clianccllcrie  of  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  with  mythological 
figures  and  a  Latin  inscription  on  the  front,  —  both  of 
these  latter  buildings  being  rather  unexpected  features 
of  the  huddled  and  precipitous  little  town.  Loches 
has  a  suburb  on  the  other  side  of  the  Indre,  which  we 
had  contented  ourselves  with  looking  down  at  from 
the  heights,  while  we  wondered  whether,  even  if  it 
had  not  been  getting  late  and  our  train  were  more  ac 
commodating,  we  should  care  to  take  our  way  across 
the  bridge  and  look  up  that  bust,  in  terra-cotta,  of 
Francis  I.,  which  is  the  principal  ornament  of  the 
Chateau  de  Sansac  and  the  faubourg  of  Beaulieu.  I 
think  we  decided  that  we  should  not ;  that  we  were 
already  quite  well  enough  acquainted  with  the  nasal 
profile  of  that  monarch. 


XI 


I  KNOW  not  whether  the  exact  limits  of  an  excur 
sion,  as  distinguished  from  a  journey,  have  ever  been 
fixed;  at  any  rate,  it  seemed  none  of  my  business, 
at  Tours,  to  settle  the  question.  Therefore,  though 
the  making  of  excursions  had  been  the  purpose  of  my 


XI.]  BOURGES.  73 

stay,  I  thought  it  vain,  while  I  started  for  Bourges, 
to  determine  to  which  category  that  little  expedition 
might  belong.  It  was  not  till  the  third  day  that 
I  returned  to  Tours;  and  the  distance,  traversed 
for  the  most  part  after  dark,  was  even  greater  than 
I  had  supposed.  That,  however,  was  partly  the 
fault  of  a  tiresome  wait  at  Vierzon,  where  I  had 
more  than  enough  time  to  dine,  very  badly,  at  the 
"buffet,  and  to  observe  the  proceedings  of  a  family 
who  had  entered  my  railway  carriage  at  Tours  and 
had  conversed  unreservedly,  for  my  benefit,  all  the 
way  from  that  station,  —  a  family  whom  it  enter 
tained  me  to  assign  to  the  class  of  petite  noblesse  de 
province.  Their  noble  origin  was  confirmed  by  the 
way  they  all  made  maigre  in  the  refreshment-room 
(it  happened  to  be  a  Friday),  as  if  it  had  been  pos 
sible  to  do  anything  else.  They  ate  two  or  three 
omelets  apiece,  and  ever  so  many  little  cakes,  while 
the  positive,  talkative  mother  watched  her  children 
as  the  waiter  handed  about  the  roast  fowl.  I  was 
destined  to  share  the  secrets  of  this  family  to  the 
end;  for  when  I  had  taken  place  in  the  empty  train 
that  was  in  waiting  to  convey  us  to  Bourges,  the 
same  vigilant  woman  pushed  them  all  on  top  of  me 
into  my  compartment,  though  the  carriages  on  either 
side  contained  no  travellers  at  all.  It  was  better, 
I  found,  to  have  dined  (even  on  omelets  and  little 
cakes)  at  the  station  at  Vierzon  than  at  the  hotel  at 
Bourges,  which,  when  I  reached  it  at  nine  o'clock  at 
night,  did  not  strike  me  as  the  prince  of  hotels.  The 
inns  in  the  smaller  provincial  towns  in  France  are 
all,  as  the  term  is,  commercial,  and  the  cor/imis- 
voyaycur  is  in  triumphant  possession.  I  saw  a  great 


74  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IX  FRANCE.  [xi. 

deal  of  him  for  several  weeks  after  this ;  for  he  was 
apparently  the  only  traveller  in  the  southern  prov 
inces,  and  it  was  my  daily  fate  to  sit  opposite  to 
him  aftables  d'hote  and  in  railway  trains.  He  may 
be  known  by  two  infallible  signs,  —  his  hands  are 
fat,  and  he  tucks  his  napkin  into  his  shirt-collar.  In 
spite  of  these  idiosyncrasies,  he  seemed  to  me  a  re 
served  and  inoffensive  person,  with  singularly  little  of 
the  demonstrative  good-humor  that  he  has  been  de 
scribed  as  possessing.  I  saw  no  one  who  reminded 
me  of  Balzac's  "  illustre  Gaudissart ; "  and  indeed,  in 
the  course  of  a  month's  journey  through  a  large  part 
of  France,  I  heard  so  little  desultory  conversation 
that  I  wondered  whether  a  change  had  not  come  over 
the  spirit  of  the  people.  They  seemed  to  me  as  silent 
as  Americans  when  Americans  have  not  been  "  intro 
duced,"  and  infinitely  less  addicted  to  exchanging 
remarks  in  railway  trains  and  at  tables  d'hote  than 
the  colloquial  and  cursory  English;  a  fact  perhaps 
not  worth  mentioning  were  it  not  at  variance  with 
that  reputation  which  the  French  have  long  enjoyed  of 
being  a  pre-eminently  sociable  nation.  The  common 
report  of  the  character  of  a  people  is,  however,  an 
indefinable  product ;  and  it  is  apt  to  strike  the  trav 
eller  who  observes  for  himself  as  very  wide  of  the 
mark.  The  English,  who  have  for  ages  been  de 
scribed  (mainly  by  the  French)  as  the  dumb,  stiff, 
unapproachable  race,  present  to-day  a  remarkable 
appearance  of  good-humor  and  garrulity,  and  are 
distinguished  by  their  facility  of  intercourse.  On 
the  other  hand,  any  one  who  has  seen  half  a  dozen 
Frenchmen  pass  a  whole  day  together  in  a  railway- 
carriage  without  breaking  silence  is  forced  to  believe 


XL]  BOURGES.  75 

that  the  traditional  reputation  of  these  gentlemen  is 
simply  the  survival  of  some  primitive  formula.  It 
was  true,  doubtless,  before  the  Eevolution ;  but  there 
have  been  great  changes  since  then.  The  question  of 
which  is  the  better  taste,  to  talk  to  strangers  or  to 
hold  your  tongue,  is  a  matter  apart ;  I  inclfne  to  be 
lieve  that  the  French  reserve  is  the  result  of  a  more 
definite  conception  of  social  behavior.  I  allude  to 
it  only  because  it  is  at  variance  with  the  national 
fame,  and  at  the  same  time  is  compatible  with  a 
very  easy  view  of  life  in  certain  other  directions. 
On  some  of  these  latter  points  the  Boule  d'Or  at 
Bourges  was  full  of  instruction ;  boasting,  as  it  did,  of 
a  hall  of  reception  in  which,  amid  old  boots  that  had 
been  brought  to  be  cleaned,  old  linen  that  was  being 
sorted  for  the  wash,  and  lamps  of  evil  odor  that  were 
awaiting  replenishment,  a  strange,  familiar,  promiscu 
ous  household  life  went  forward.  Small  scullions  in 
white  caps  and  aprons  slept  upon  greasy  benches;  the 
Boots  sat  staring  at  you  while  you  fumbled,  helpless, 
in  a  row  of  pigeon-holes,  for  your  candlestick  or  your 
key ;  and,  amid  the  coming  and  going  of  the  commis- 
voyagcurs,  a  little  sempstress  bent  over  the  under- 
. garments  of  the  hostess,  —  the  latter  being  a  heavy, 
stern,  silent  woman,  who  looked  at  people  very  hard. 
It  was  not  to  be  looked  at  in  that  manner  that  one 
had  come  all  the  way  from  Tours ;  so  that  within  ten 
minutes  after  my  arrival  I  sallied  out  into  the  dark 
ness  to  get  somehow  and  somewhere  a  happier  im 
pression.  However  late  in  the  evening  I  may  arrive 
at  a  place,  I  cannot  go  to  bed  without  an  impression. 
The  natural  place,  at  Bourges,  to  look  for  one  seemed 
to  be  the  cathedral ;  which,  moreover,  was  the  only 


76  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XI. 

thing  that  could  account  for  my  presence  dans  cette 
galere.  I  turned  out  of  a  small  square,  in  front  of  the 
hotel,  and  walked  up  a  narrow,  sloping  street,  paved 
with  big,  rough  stones  and  guiltless  of  a  foot-way. 
It  was  a  splendid  starlight  night;  the  stillness  of 
a  sleeping  wile  de  province  was  over  everything; 
I  had  the  whole  place  to  myself.  I  turned  to  my 
right,  at  the  top  of  the  street,  where  presently  a 
short,  vague  lane  brought  me  into  sight  of  the  ca 
thedral.  I  approached  it  obliquely,  from  behind ;  it 
loomed  up  in  the  darkness  above  me,  enormous  and 
sublime.  It  stands  on  the  top  of  the  large  but  not 
lofty  eminence  over  which  Bourges  is  scattered, — 
a  very  good  position,  as  French  cathedrals  go,  for 
they  are  not  all  so  nobly  situated  as  Chartres  and 
Laon.  On  the  side  on  which  I  approached  it  (the 
south)  it  is  tolerably  well  exposed,  though  the  pre 
cinct  is  shabby;  in  front,  it  is  rather  too  much  shut 
in.  These  defects,  however,  it  makes  up  for  on  the 
north  side  and  behind,  where  it  presents  itself  in  the 
most  admirable  manner  to  the  garden  of  the  Arche- 
veche,  which  has  been  arranged  as  a  public  walk,  with 
the  usual  formal  alleys  of  the  jar  din  frangais.  I 
must  add  that  I  appreciated  these  points  only  on  the 
following  day.  As  I  stood  there  in  the  light  of  the 
stars,  many  of  which  had  an  autumnal  sharpness, 
while  others  were  shooting  over  the  heavens,  the 
huge,  rugged  vessel  of  the  church  overhung  me  in 
very  much  the  same  way  as  the  black  hull  of  a 
ship  at  sea  would  overhang  a  solitary  swimmer.  It 
seemed  colossal,  stupendous,  a  dark  leviathan. 

The  next  morning,  which  was  lovely,  I  lost   no 
time  in  going  back  to  it,  and  found,  with  satisfaction, 


XI.]         BOURGES:  THE  CATHEDRAL.          77 

that  the  daylight  did  it  no  injury.  The  cathedral  of 
Bourges  is  indeed  magnificently  huge;  and  if  it  is  a 
good  deal  wanting  in  lightness  and  grace  it  is  per 
haps  only  the  more  imposing.  I  read  in  the  excel 
lent  hand-book  of  M.  Joanne  that  it  was  projected 
"des  1172,"  but  commenced  only  in  the  first  years 
of  the  thirteenth  century.  "The  nave,"  the  writer 
adds,  "  was  finished  tant  lien  que  mal,  faute  de  res- 
sources  ;  the  facade  is  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries  in  its  lower  part,  and  of  the  fourteenth  in 
its  upper."  The  allusion  to  the  nave  means  the  omis 
sion  of  the  transepts.  The  west  front  consists  of  two 
vast  but  imperfect  towers  ;  one  of  which  (the  south) 
is  immensely  buttressed,  so  that  its  outline  slopes  for 
ward,  like  that  of  a  pyramid,  being  the  taller  of  the 
two.  If  they  had  spires,  these  towers  would  be  pro 
digious  ;  as  it  is,  given  the  rest  of  the  church,  they 
are  wanting  in  elevation.  There  are  five  deeply  re 
cessed  portals,  all  in  a  row,  each  surmounted  with  a 
gable ;  the  gable  over  the  central  door  being  excep 
tionally  high.  Above  the  porches,  which  give  the 
measure  of  its  width,  the  front  rears  itself,  piles  itself, 
on  a  great,  scale,  carried  up  by  galleries,  arches,  win 
dows,  sculptures,  and  supported  by  the  extraordinarily 
thick  buttresses  of  which  I  have  spoken,  and  which, 
though  they  embellish  it  with  deep  shadows  thrown 
sidewise,  do  not  improve  its  style.  The  portals,  es 
pecially  the  middle  one,  are  extremely  interesting ; 
they  are  covered  with  curious  early  sculptures.  The 
middle  one,  however,  I  must  describe  alone.  It  has 
no  less  than  six  rows  of  figures,  —  the  others  have 
four,  —  some  of  which,  notably  the  upper  one,  are 
still  in  their  places.  The  arch  at  the  top  has  three 


78  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [xi. 

tiers  of  elaborate  imagery.  The  upper  of  these  is 
divided  by  the  figure  of  Christ  in  judgment,  of  great 
size,  stiff  and  terrible,  with  outstretched  arms.  On 
either  side  of  him  are  ranged  three  or  four  angels, 
with  the  instruments  of  the  Passion.  Beneath  him, 
in  the  second  frieze,  stands  the  angel  of  justice,  with 
his  scales ;  and  on  either  side  of  him  is  the  vision  of 
the  last  judgment.  The  good  prepare,  with  infinite 
titillation  and  complacency,  to  ascend  to  the  skies; 
while  the  bad  are  dragged,  pushed,  hurled,  stuffed, 
crammed,  into  pits  and  caldrons  of  fire.  There  is  a 
charming  detail  in  this  section.  Beside  the  angel,  on 
the  right,  where  the  wicked  are  the  prey  of  demons, 
stands  a  little  female  figure,  that  of  a  child,  who, 
with  hands  meekly  folded  and  head  gently  raised, 
waits  for  the  stern  angel  to  decide  upon  her  fate.  In 
this  fate,  however,  a  dreadful  big  devil  also  takes  a 
keen  interest ;  he  seems  on  the  point  of  appropriating 
the  tender  creature;  he  has  a  face  like  a  goat  and  an 
enormous  hooked  nose.  But  the  angel  gently  lays  a 
hand  upon  the  shoulder  of  the  little  girl  —  the  move 
ment  is  full  of  dignity  —  as  if  to  say,  "  No ;  she  be 
longs  to  the  other  side."  The  frieze  below  represents 
the  general  resurrection,  with  the  good  and  the  wicked 
emerging  from  their  sepulchres.  Nothing  can  be 
more  quaint  and  charming  than  the  difference  shown 
in  their  way  of  responding  to  the  final  trump.  The 
good  get  out  of  their  tombs  with  a  certain  modest 
gayety,  an  alacrity  tempered  by  respect;  one  of 
them  kneels  to  pray  as  soon  as  he  has  disinterred 
himself.  You  may  know  the  wicked,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  their  extreme  shyness ;  they  crawl  out 
slowly  and  fearfully;  they  hang  back,  and  seem  to 


XL]         BOUKGES:  THE  CATHEDRAL.         79 

say,  "  Oh,  dear  ! "  These  elaborate  sculptures,  full  of 
ingenuous  intention  and  of  the  reality  of  early  faith, 
are  in  a  remarkable  state  of  preservation  ;  they  bear 
no  superficial  signs  of  restoration,  and  appear  scarcely 
to  have  suffered  from  the  centuries.  They  are  de 
lightfully  expressive  ;  the  artist  had  the  advantage  of 
knowing  exactly  the  effect  he  wished  to  produce. 

The  interior  of  the  cathedral  has  a  great  simplicity 
and  majesty,  and,  above  all,  a  tremendous  height. 
The  nave  is  extraordinary  in  this  respect ;  it  dwarfs 
everything  else  I  know.  I  should  add,  however, 
that  I  am,  in  architecture,  always  of  the  opinion  of 
the  last  speaker.  Any  great  building  seems  to  me, 
while  I  look  at  it,  the  ultimate  expression.  At  any 
rate,  during  the  hour  that  I  sat  gazing  along  the  high 
vista  of  Bourges,  the  interior  of  the  great  vessel  cor 
responded  to  my  vision  of  the  evening  before.  There 
is  a  tranquil  largeness,  a  kind  of  infinitude,  about  such 
an  edifice :  it  soothes  and  purifies  the  spirit,  it  illu 
minates  the  mind.  There  are  two  aisles,  on  either 
side,  in  addition  to  the  nave,  —  five  in  all,  —  and,  as  I 
have  said,  there  are  no  transepts ;  an  omission  which 
lengthens  the  vista,  so  that  from  my  place  near  the 
door  the  central  jewelled  window  in  the  depths  of 
the  perpendicular  choir  seemed  a  mile  or  two  away. 
The  second,  or  outward,  of  each  pair  of  aisles  is  too 
low,  and  the  first  too  high ;  without  this  inequality 
the  nave  would  appear  to  take  an  even  more  pro 
digious  flight.  The  double  aisles  pass  all  the  way 
round  the  choir,  the  windows  of  which  are  inordi 
nately  rich  in  magnificent  old  glass.  I  have  seen 
glass  as  fine  in  other  churches ;  but  I  think  I  have 
never  seen  so  much  of  it  at  once. 


80  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XL 

Beside  the  cathedral,  on  the  north,  is  a  curious 
structure  of  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  century,  which 
looks  like  an  enormous  flying  buttress,  with  its  sup 
port,  sustaining  the  north  tower.  It  makes  a  massive 
arch,  high  in  the  air,  and  produces  a  romantic  effect 
as  people  pass  under  it  to  the  open  gardens  of  the 
Archeveche,  which  extend  to  a  considerable  distance 
in  the  rear  of  the  church.  The  structure  supporting 
the  arch  has  the  girth  of  a  largeish  house,  and  con 
tains  chambers  with  whose  uses  I  am  unacquainted, 
but  to  which  the  deep  pulsations  of  the  cathedral, 
the  vibration  of  its  mighty  bells,  and  the  roll  of  its 
organ-tones  must  be  transmitted  even  through  the 
great  arm  of  stone. 

The  archiepiscopal  palace,  not  walled  in  as  at 
Tours,  is  visible  as  a  stately  habitation  of  the  last 
century,  now  in  course  of  reparation  in  consequence 
of  a  fire.  From  this  side,  and  from  the  gardens  of 
the  palace,  the  nave  of  the  cathedral  is  visible  in  all  its 
great  length  and  height,  with  its  extraordinary  multi 
tude  of  supports.  The  gardens  aforesaid,  accessible 
through  tall  iron  gates,  are  the  promenade  —  the  Tui- 
leries  —  of  the  town,  and,  very  pretty  in  themselves, 
are  immensely  set  off  by  the  overhanging  church.  It 
was  warm  and  sunny ;  the  benches  were  empty ;  I  sat 
there  a  long  time,  in  that  pleasant  state  of  mind 
which  visits  the  traveller  in  foreign  towns,  when  he 
is  not  too  hurried,  while  he  wonders  where  he  had 
better  go  next.  The  straight,  unbroken  line  of  the 
roof  of  the  cathedral  was  very  noble  ;  but  I  could  see 
from  this  point  how  much  finer  the  effect  would  have 
been  if  the  towers,  which  had  dropped  almost  out  of 
sight,  might  have  been  carried  still  higher.  The 


XII.]         BOURGES:  JACQUES  C(EUR.          81 

archiepiscopal  gardens  look  down  at  one  end  over 
a  sort  of  esplanade  or  suburban  avenue  lying  on  a 
lower  level,  on  which  they  open,  and  where  several 
detachments  of  soldiers  (Bourges  is  full  of  soldiers) 
had  just  been  drawn  up.  The  civil  population  was 
also  collecting,  and  I  saw  that  something  was  going 
to  happen.  I  learned  that  a  private  of  the  Chasseurs 
was  to  be  "  broken  "  for  stealing,  and  every  one  was 
eager  to  behold  the  ceremony.  Sundry  other  de 
tachments  arrived  on  the  ground,  besides  many  of 
the  military  who  had  come  as  a  matter  of  taste.  One 
of  them  described  to  me  the  process  of  degradation 
from  the  ranks,  and  I  felt  for  a  moment  a  hideous 
curiosity  to  see  it,  under  the  influence  of  which  I  lin 
gered  a  little.  But  only  a  little ;  the  hateful  nature  of 
the  spectacle  hurried  me  away,  at  the  same  time  that 
others  were  hurrying  forward.  As  I  turned  my  back 
upon  it  I  reflected  that  human  beings  are  cruel  brutes, 
though  I  could  not  flatter  myself  that  the  ferocity  of 
the  thing  was  exclusively  French.  In  another  country 
the  concourse  would  have  been  equally  great,  and  the 
moral  of  it  all  seemed  to  be  that  military  penalties 
are  as  terrible  as  military  honors  are  gratifying. 


XII. 

THE  cathedral  is  not  the  only  lion  of  Bourges ;  the 
house  of  Jacques  Cceur  is  an  object  of  interest 
scarcely  less  positive.  This  remarkable  man  had 
a  very  strange  history,  and  he  too  was  "  broken," 
like  the  wretched  soldier  whom  I  did  not  stay  to 

6 


82  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [xil, 

see.  He  has  been  rehabilitated,  however,  by  an  age 
which  does  not  fear  the  imputation  of  paradox,  and  a 
marble  statue  of  him  ornaments  the  street  in  front  of 
his  house.  To  interpret  him  according  to  this  image 
—  a  womanish  figure  in  a  long  robe  and  a  turban, 
with  big  bare  arms  and  a  dramatic  pose  —  would  be 
to  think  of  him  as  a  kind  of  truculent  sultana.  He 
wore  the  dress  of  his  period,  but  his  spirit  was  very 
modern;  he  was  a  Vanderbilt  or  a  Eothschild  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  He  supplied  the  ungrateful 
Charles  VII.  with  money  to  pay  the  troops  who, 
under  the  heroic  Maid,  drove  the  English  from 
Trench  soil.  His  house,  which  to-day  is  used  as  a 
Palais  de  Justice,  appears  to  have  been  regarded  at 
the  time  it  was  built  very  much  as  the  residence  of 
Mr.  Yanderbilt  is  regarded  in  New  York  to-day.  It 
stands  on  the  edge  of  the  hill  on  which  most  of  the 
town  is  planted,  so  that,  behind,  it  plunges  down  to  a 
lower  level,  and,  if  you  approach  it  on  that  side,  as  I 
did,  to  come  round  to  the  front  of  it,  you  have  to 
ascend  a  longish  flight  of  steps.  The  back,  of  old, 
must  have  formed  a  portion  of  the  city  wall ;  at  any 
rate,  it  offers  to  view  two  big  towers,  which  Joanne 
says  were  formerly  part  of  the  defence  of  Bourges. 
From  the  lower  level  of  which  I  speak  —  the  square 
in  front  of  the  post-office  —  the  palace  of  Jacques 
Coeur  looks  very  big  and  strong  and  feudal ;  from  the 
upper  street,  in  front  of  it,  it  looks  very  handsome 
and  delicate.  To  this  street  it  presents  two  stories 
and  a  considerable  length  of  facade ;  and  it  has,  both 
within  and  without,  a  great  deal  of  curious  and 
beautiful  detail.  Above  the  portal,  in  the  stonework, 
are  two  false  windows,  in  which  two  figures,  a  man 


XII.]  BOURGES:    JACQUES   CCEUR.  83 

and  a  woman,  apparently  household  servants,  are 
represented,  in  sculpture,  as  looking  down  into  the 
street.  The  effect  is  homely,  yet  grotesque,  and  the 
figures  are  sufficiently  living  to  make  one  commiserate 
them  for  having  been  condemned,  in  so  dull  a  town, 
to  spend  several  centuries  at  the  window.  They  ap 
pear  to  be  watching  for  the  return  of  their  master, 
who  left  his  beautiful  house  one  morning  and  never 
came  back. 

The  history  of  Jacques  Cceur,  which  has  been 
written  by  M.  Pierre  Clement,  in  a  volume  crowned 
by  the  French  Academy,  is  very  wonderful  and  in 
teresting,  but  I  have  no  space  to  go  into  it  here. 
There  is  no  more  curious  example,  and  few  more 
tragical,  of  a  great  fortune  crumbling  from  one  day  to 
the  other,  or  of  the  antique  superstition  that  the  gods 
grow  jealous  of  human  success.  Merchant,  million- 
naire,  banker,  ship-owner,  royal  favorite,  and  minister 
of  finance,  explorer  of  the  East  and  monopolist  of  the 
glittering  trade  between  that  quarter  of  the  globe  and 
his  own,  great  capitalist  who  had  anticipated  the 
brilliant  operations  of  the  present  time,  he  expiated 
his  prosperity  by  poverty,  imprisonment,  and  torture. 
The  obscure  points  in  his  career  have  been  elucidated 
by  M.  Clement,  who  has  drawn,  moreover,  a  very 
vivid  picture  of  the  corrupt  and  exhausted  state  of 
France  during  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
He  has  shown  that  the  spoliation  of  the  great  mer 
chant  was  a  deliberately  calculated  act,  and  that  the 
king  sacrificed  him  without  scruple  or  shame  to  the 
avidity  of  a  singularly  villanous  set  of  courtiers. 
The  whole  story  is  an  extraordinary  picture  of  high 
handed  rapacity,  —  the  crudest  possible  assertion  of 


84  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XII. 

the  right  of  the  stronger.  The  victim  was  stripped 
of  his  property,  but  escaped  with  his  life,  made  his 
way  out  of  France,  and,  betaking  himself  to  Italy, 
offered  his  services  to  the  Pope.  It  is  proof  of  the 
consideration  that  he  enjoyed  in  Europe,  and  of  the 
variety  of  his  accomplishments,  that  Calixtus  III. 
should  have  appointed  him.  to  take  command  of  a 
fleet  which  his  Holiness  was  fitting  out  against  the 
Turks.  Jacques  Coeur,  however,  was  not  destined 
to  lead  it  to  victory.  He  died  shortly  after  the 
expedition  had  started,  in  the  island  of  Chios,  in 
1456.  The  house  at  Bourges,  his  native  place,  tes 
tifies  in  some  degree  to  his  wealth  and  splendor, 
though  it  has  in  parts  that  want  of  space  which  is 
striking  in  many  of  the  buildings  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  court,  indeed,  is  on  a  large  scale,  orna 
mented  with  turrets  and  arcades,  with  several  beau 
tiful  windows,  and  with  sculptures  inserted  in  the 
walls,  representing  the  various  sources  of  the  great 
fortune  of  the  owner.  M.  Pierre  Clement  describes 
this  part  of  the  house  as  having  been  of  an  "  incom 
parable  richesse,"  —  an  estimate  of  its  charms  which 
seems  slightly  exaggerated  to-day.  There  is,  however, 
something  delicate  and  familiar  in  the  bas-reliefs  of 
which  I  have  spoken,  little  scenes  of  agriculture  and 
industry,  which  show  that  the  proprietor  was  not 
ashamed  of  calling  attention  to  his  harvests  and 
enterprises.  To-day  we  should  question  the  taste 
of  such  allusions,  even  in  plastic  form,  in  the  house 
of  a  "  merchant  prince  "  (say  in  the  Fifth  Avenue). 
Why  is  it,  therefore,  that  these  quaint  little  panels  at 
Bourges  do  not  displease  us  ?  It  is  perhaps  because 
things  very  ancient  never,  for  some  mysterious  reason, 


XII.]  BOURGES:    JACQUES   CCEUR.  85 

appear  vulgar.  This  fifteenth-century  millionnaire, 
with  his  palace,  his  egotistical  sculptures,  may  have 
produced  that  impression  on  some  critical  spirits  of 
his  own  day. 

The  portress  who  showed  me  into  the  building  was 
a  dear  little  old  woman,  with  the  gentlest,  sweetest, 
saddest  face  —  a  little  white,  aged  face,  with  dark, 
pretty  eyes  —  and  the  most  considerate  manner. 
She  took  me  up  into  an  upper  hall,  where  there  were 
a  couple  of  curious  chimney-pieces  and  a  fine  old 
oaken  roof,  the  latter  representing  the  hollow  of  a 
long  boat.  There  is  a  certain  oddity  in  a  native  of 
Bourges  —  an  inland  town  if  there  ever  was  one, 
without  even  a  river  (to  call  a  river)  to  encourage 
nautical  ambitions  —  having  found  his  end  as  admi 
ral  of  a  fleet;  but  this  boat-shaped  roof,  which  is 
extremely  graceful  and  is  repeated  in  another  apart 
ment,  would  suggest  that  the  imagination  of  Jacques 
Coeur  was  fond  of  riding  the  waves.  Indeed,  as  he 
trafficked  in  Oriental  products  and  owned  many  gal 
leons,  it  is  probable  that  he  was  personally  as  much  at 
home  in  certain  Mediterranean  ports  as  in  the  capital 
of  the  pastoral  Berry.  If,  when  he  looked  at  the  ceil 
ings  of  his  mansion,  he  saw  his  boats  upside  down, 
this  was  only  a  suggestion  of  the  shortest  way  of 
emptying  them  of  their  treasures.  He  is  presented  in 
person  above  one  of  the  great  stone  chimney-pieces, 
in  company  with  his  wife,  Macee  de  Leodepart,  —  I 
like  to  write  such  an  extraordinary  name.  Carved 
in  white  stone,  the  two  sit  playing  at  chess  at  an  open 
window,  through  which  they  appear  to  give  their  at 
tention  much  more  to  the  passers-by  than  to  the 
game.  They  are  also  exhibited  in  other  attitudes; 


86  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XIL 

though  I  do  not  recognize  them  in  the  composition 
on  top  of  one  of  the  fireplaces  which  represents  the 
battlements  of  a  castle,  with  the  defenders  (little 
figures  between  the  crenellations)  hurling  down  mis 
siles  with  a  great  deal  of  fury  and  expression.  It 
would  have  been  hard  to  believe  that  the  man  who 
surrounded  himself  with  these  friendly  and  humorous 
devices  had  been  guilty  of  such  wrong-doing  as  to 
call  down  the  heavy  hand  of  justice. 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  however,  that  Bourges  con 
tains  legal  associations  of  a  purer  kind  than  the 
prosecution  of  Jacques  Cceur,  which,  in  spite  of  the 
rehabilitations  of  history,  can  hardly  be  said  yet  to 
have  terminated,  inasmuch  as  the  law-courts  of  the 
city  are  installed  in  his  quondam  residence.  At  a 
short  distance  from  it  stands  the  Hotel  Cujas,  one 
of  the  curiosities  of  Bourges  and  the  habitation  for 
many  years  of  the  great  jurisconsult  who  revived  in 
the  sixteenth  century  the  study  of  the  Eoman  law, 
and  professed  it  during  the  close  of  his  life  in  the  uni 
versity  of  the  capital  of  Berry.  The  learned  Cujas 
had,  in  spite  of  his  sedentary  pursuits,  led  a  very 
wandering  life  ;  he  died  at  Bourges  in  the  year  1590. 
Sedentary  pursuits  is  perhaps  not  exactly  what  I 
should  call  them,  having  read  in  the  "  Biographic 
Universelle  "  (sole  source  of  my  knowledge  of  the  re 
nowned  Cujacius)  that  his  usual  manner  of  study  was 
to  spread  himself  on  his  belly  on  the  floor.  He  did 
not  sit  down,  he  lay  down ;  and  the  "  Biographic  Uni 
verselle  "  has  (for  so  grave  a  work)  an  amusing  pic 
ture  of  the  short,  fat,  untidy  scholar  dragging  himself 
a  plat  venire  across  his  room,  from  one  pile  of  books  to 
the  other.  The  house  in  which  these  singular  gym- 


XII.]  BOURGES:    JACQUES  CCEUR.  87 

nasties  took  place,  and  which  is  now  the  headquarters 
of  the  gendarmerie,  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
at  Bourges.  Dilapidated  and  discolored,  it  has  a 
charming  Eenaissance  front.  A  high  wall  separates 
it  from  the  street,  and  on  this  wall,  which  is  divided 
by  a  large  open  gateway,  are  perched  two  overhanging 
turrets.  The  open  gateway  admits  you  to  the  court, 
beyond  which  the  melancholy  mansion  erects  itself, 
decorated  also  with  turrets,  with  fine  old  windows, 
and  with  a  beautiful  tone  of  faded  red  brick  and 
rusty  stone.  It  is  a  charming  encounter  for  a  provin 
cial  by-street ;  one  of  those  accidents  in  the  hope  of 
which  the  traveller  with  a  propensity  for  sketching 
(whether  on  a  little  paper  block  or  on  the  tablets 
of  his  brain)  decides  to  turn  a  corner  at  a  venture. 
A  brawny  gendarme,  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  was  polish 
ing  his  boots  in  the  court ;  an  ancient,  knotted  vine, 
forlorn  of  its  clusters,  hung  itself  over  a  doorway,  and 
dropped  its  shadow  on  the  rough  grain  of  the  wall. 
The  place  was  very  sketchable.  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
however,  that  it  was  almost  the  only  "  bit."  Various 
other  curious  old  houses  are  supposed  to  exist  at 
Bourges,  and  I  wandered  vaguely  about  in  search 
of  them.  But  I  had  little  success,  and  I  ended  by 
becoming  sceptical.  Bourges  is  a  mile,  de  province 
in  the  full  force  of  the  term,  especially  as  applied 
invidiously.  The  streets,  narrow,  tortuous,  and  dirty, 
have  very  wide  eobble-stones ;  the  houses  for  the 
most  part  are  shabby,  without  local  color.  The  look 
of  things  is  neither  modern  nor  antique,  —  a  kind 
of  mediocrity  of  middle  age.  There  is  an  enormous 
number  of  blank  walls,  —  walls  of  gardens,  of  courts, 
of  private  houses  —  that  avert  themselves  from  the 


88  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XII. 

street,  as  if  in  natural  chagrin  at  there  being  so  lit 
tle  to  see.  Round  about  is  a  dull,  flat,  featureless 
country,  on  which  the  magnificent  cathedral  looks 
down.  There  is  a  peculiar  dulness  and  ugliness  in  a 
French  town  of  this  type,  which,  I  must  immediately 
add,  is  not  the  most  frequent  one.  In  Italy,  every 
thing  has  a  charm,  a  color,  a  grace ;  even  desolation 
and  ennui.  In  England  a  cathedral  city  may  be 
sleepy,  but  it  is  pretty  sure  to  be  mellow.  In  the 
course  of  six  weeks  spent  en  province,  however,  I 
saw  few  places  that  had  not  more  expression  than 
Bourges. 

I  went  back  to  the  cathedral ;  that,  after  all,  was 
a  feature.  Then  I  returned  to  my  hotel,  where 
it  was  time  to  dine,  and  sat  down,  as  usual,  with 
the  commis-voyagcurs,  who  cut  their  bread  on  their 
thumb  and  partook  of  every  course ;  and  after  this 
repast  I  repaired  for  a  while  to  the  cafe,  which 
occupied  a  part  of  the  basement  of  the  inn  and 
opened  into  its  court.  /This  cafe  was  a  friendly, 
homely,  sociable  spot,  where  it  seemed  the  habit  of 
the  master  of  the  establishment  to  tutoyer  his  cus 
tomers,  and  the  practice  of  the  customers  to  tutoyer 
the  waiter.  Under  these  circumstances  the  waiter 
of  course  felt  justified  in  sitting  down  at  the  same 
table  with  a  gentleman  who  had  come  in  and  asked 
him  for  writing  materials.  He  served  this  gentleman 
with  a  horrible  little  portfolio,  covered  with  shiny 
black  cloth  and  accompanied  with  two  sheets  of  thin 
paper,  three  wafers,  and  one  of  those  instruments 
of  torture  which  pass  in  France  for  pens,  —  these 
being  the  utensils  invariably  evoked  by  such  a  re 
quest  ;  and  then,  finding  himself  at  leisure,  lie  placed 


XII.]  BOURGES:    JACQUES  CCEUR.  89 

himself  opposite  and  began  to  write  a  letter  of  his 
own.  This  trifling  incident  reminded  me  afresh  that 
France  is  a  democratic  country.  I  think  I  received 
an  admonition  to  the  same  effect  from  the  free,  fa 
miliar  way  in  which  the  game  of  whist  was  going  on 
just  behind  me.  It  was  attended  with  a  great  deal  of 
noisy  pleasantry,  flavored  every  now  and  then  with  a 
dash  of  irritation.  There  was  a  young  man  of  whom 
I  made  a  note  ;  he  was  such  a  beautiful  specimen  of 
his  class.  Sometimes  he  was  very  facetious,  chatter 
ing,  joking,  punning,  showing  off;  then,  as  the  game 
went  on  and  he  lost,  and  had  to  pay  the  consomma- 
tion,  he  dropped  his  amiability,  slanged  his  partner, 
declared  he  would  n't  play  any  more,  and  went  away 
in  a  fury.  Nothing  could  be  more  perfect  or  more 
amusing  than  the  contrast.  The  manner  of  the 
whole  affair  was  such  as,  I  apprehend,  one  would  not 
have  seen  among  our  English-speaking  people  ;  both 
the  jauntiness  of  the  first  phase  and  the  petulance  of 
the  second.  To  hold  the  balance  straight,  however, 
I  may  remark  that  if  the  men  were  all  fearful  "  cads," 
they  were,  with  their  cigarettes  and  their  inconsist 
ency,  less  heavy,  less  brutal,  than  our  dear  English- 
speaking  cad ;  just  as  the  bright  little  cafe  where  a 
robust  materfamilias,  doling  out  sugar  and  darning 
a  stocking,  sat  in  her  place  under  the  mirror  behind 
the  comptoir,  was  a  much  more  civilized  spot  than 
a  British  public-house,  or  a  "commercial  room," 
with  pipes  and  whiskey,  or  even  than  an  American 
saloon. 


90  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XIII. 


XIII. 

IT  is  very  certain  that  when  I  left  Tours  for  Le 
Mans  it  was  a  journey  and  not  an  excursion ;  for 
I  had  no  intention  of  coming  back.  The  question, 
indeed,  was  to  get  away,  —  no  easy  matter  in  France, 
in  the  early  days  of  October,  when  the  whole  jeunesse 
of  the  country  is  going  back  to  school  It  is  accom 
panied,  apparently,  with  parents  and  grandparents, 
and  it  fills  the  trains  with  little  pale-faced  lycfcns, 
who  gaze  out  of  the  windows  with  a  longing,  linger 
ing  air,  not  unnatural  on  the  part  of  small  members 
of  a  race  in  which  life  is  intense,  who  are  about 
to  be  restored  to  those  big  educative  barracks  that  do 
such  violence  to  our  American  appreciation  of  the  op 
portunities  of  boyhood.  The  train  stopped  every  five 
minutes ;  but,  fortunately,  the  country  was  charm 
ing,  —  hilly  and  bosky,  eminently  good-humored,  and 
dotted  here  and  there  with  a  smart  little  chateau. 
The  old  capital  of  the  province  of  the  Maine,  which 
has  given  its  name  to  a  great  American  State,  is  a 
fairly  interesting  town,  but  I  confess  that  I  found 
in  it  less  than  I  expected  to  admire.  My  expec 
tations  had  doubtless  been  my  own  fault ;  there  is 
no  particular  reason  why  Le  Mans  should  fascinate. 
It  stands  upon  a  hill,  indeed,  —  a  much  better  hill 
than  the  gentle  swell  of  Bourges.  This  hill,  how 
ever,  is  not -steep  in  all  directions  ;  from  the  railway, 
as  I  arrived,  it  was  not  even  perceptible.  Since  I 
am  making  comparisons,  I  may  remark  that,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  Boule  d'Or  at  Le  Mans  is  an  ap 
preciably  better  inn  than  the  Boule  d'Or  at  Bourges. 


XIII.]  LE   MANS.  91 

It  looks  out  upon  a  small  market-place  which  has  a 
certain  amount  of  character  and  seems  to  be  slipping 
down  the  slope  on  which  it  lies,  though  it  has  in 
the  middle  an  ugly  hallc,  or  circular  market-house,  to 
keep  it  in  position.  At  Le  Mans,  as  at  Bourges,  my 
first  business  was  with  the  cathedral,  to  which  I  lost 
no  time  in  directing  my  steps.  It  suffered  by  juxta 
position  to  the  great  church  I  had  seen  a  few  days 
before ;  yet  it  has  some  noble  features.  It  stands  on 
the  edge  of  the  eminence  of  the  town,  which  falls 
straight  away  on  two  sides  of  it,  and  makes  a  strik 
ing  mass,  bristling  behind,  as  you  see  it  from  below, 
with  rather  small  but  singularly  numerous  flying 
buttresses.  On  my  way  to  it  I  happened  to  walk 
through  the  one  street  which  contains  a  few  ancient 
and  curious  houses,  —  a  very  crooked  and  untidy  lane, 
of  really  mediseval  aspect,  honored  with  the  denom 
ination  of  the  Grand'  Eue.  Here  is  the  house  of 
Queen  Berengaria,  —  an  absurd  name,  as  the  build 
ing  is  of  a  date  some  three  hundred  years  later  than 
the  wife  of  Eichard  Cceur  de  Lion,  who  has  a  sepul 
chral  monument  in  the  south  aisle  of  the  cathedral. 
The  structure  in  question  —  very  sketchable,  if  the 
sketcher  could  get  far  enough  away  from  it  —  is  an 
elaborate  little  dusky  facade,  overhanging  the  street, 
ornamented  with  panels  of  stone,  which  are  covered 
with  delicate  Renaissance  sculpture.  A  fat  old  wo 
man,  standing  in  the  door  of  a  small  grocer's  shop 
next  to  it,  —  a  most  gracious  old  woman,  with  a 
bristling  moustache  and  a  charming  manner,  —  told 
me  what  the  house  was,  and  also  indicated  to  me  a 
rotten -looking  brown  wooden  mansion,  in  the  same 
street,  nearer  the  cathedral,  as  the  Maison  Scarron. 


92  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [xill. 

The  author  of  the  "  Eoman  Comique,"  and  of  a  thou 
sand  facetious  verses,  enjoyed  for  some  years,  in  the 
early  part  of  his  life,  a  benefice  in  the  cathedral  of 
Le  Mans,  which  gave  him  a  right  to  reside  in  one  of 
the  canonical  houses.  He  was  rather  an  odd  canon, 
but  his  history  is  a  combination  of  oddities.  He 
wooed  the  comic  muse  from  the  arm-chair  of  a  cripple, 
and  in  the  same  position  —  he  was  unable  even  to 
go  down  on  his  knees  —  prosecuted  that  other  suit 
which  made  him  the  first  husband  of  a  lady  of  whom 
Louis  XIV.  was  to  be  the  second.  There  was  little 
of  comedy  in  the  future  Madame  de  Maintenon; 
though,  after  all,  there  was  doubtless  as  much  as 
there  need  have  been  in  the  wife  of  a  poor  man  who 
was  moved  to  compose  for  his  tomb  such  an  epi 
taph  as  this,  which  I  quote  from  the  "Biographic 
Universelle  " :  — 

"  Celui  qui  cy  maintenant  dort, 
Fit  plus  de  pitie  que  d'envie, 
Et  souffrit  mille  fois  la  mort, 
Avant  que  de  perdre  la  vie. 
Passant,  ne  fais  icy  de  bruit, 
Et  garde  bien  qu'il  ne  s'eveille, 
Car  voicy  la  premiere  nuit, 
Que  le  pauvre  Scarron  sommeille." 

There  is  rather  a  quiet,  satisfactory  place  in  front 
of  the  cathedral,  with  some  good  "  bits  "  in  it ;  notably 
a  turret  at  the  angle  of  one  of  the  towers,  and  a  very 
fine,  steep-roofed  dwelling,  behind  low  walls,  which 
it  overlooks,  with  a  tall  iron  gate.  This  house  has 
two  or  three  little  pointed  towers,  a  big,  black,  pre 
cipitous  roof,  and  a  general  air  of  having  had  a  history. 
There  are  houses  which  are  scenes,  and  there  are 
houses  which  are  only  houses.  The  trouble  with  the 


XIII.]  LE   MANS.  93 

domestic  architecture  of  the  United  States  is  that  it 
is  not  scenic,  thank  Heaven !  and  the  good  fortune  of 
an  old  structure  like  the  turreted  mansion  on  the 
hillside  of  Le  Mans  is  that  it  is  not  simply  a  house. 
It  is  a  person,  as  it  were,  as  well.  It  would  be  well, 
indeed,  if  it  might  have  communicated  a  little  of 
its  personality  to  the  front  of  the  cathedral,  which 
has  none  of  its  own.  Shabby,  rusty,  unfinished,  this 
front  has  a  romanesque  portal,  but  nothing  in  the  way 
of  a  tower.  One  sees  from  without,  at  a  glance,  the 
peculiarity  of  the  church,  —  the  disparity  between 
the  romanesque  nave,  which  is  small  and  of  the 
twelfth  century,  and  the  immense  and  splendid  tran 
septs  and  choir,  of  a  period  a  hundred  years  later. 
Outside,  this  end  of  the  church  rises  far  above  the 
nave,  which  looks  merely  like  a  long  porch  leading 
to  it,  with  a  small  and  curious  romanesque  porch 
in  its  own  south  flank.  The  transepts,  shallow  but 
very  lofty,  display  to  the  spectators  in  the  place  the 
reach  of  their  two  clere-story  windows,  which  occupy, 
above,  the  whole  expanse  of  the  wall.  The  south 
transept  terminates  in  a  sort  of  tower,  which  is  the 
only  one  of  which  the  cathedral  can  boast.  Within, 
the  effect  of  the  choir  is  superb ;  it  is  a  church  in  it 
self,  with  the  nave  simply  for  a  point  of  view.  As  I 
stood  there,  I  read  in  my  Murray  that  it'  has  the 
stamp  of  the  date  of  the  perfection  of  pointed  gothic, 
and  I  found  nothing  to  object  to  the  remark.  It  suf 
fers  little  by  confrontation  with  Bourges,  and,  taken 
in  itself,  seems  to  me  quite  as  fine.  A  passage  of 
double  aisles  surrounds  it,  with  the  arches  that  di 
vide  them  supported  on  very  thick  round  columns, 
not  clustered.  There  are  twelve  chapels  in  this 


94  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XIII. 

passage,  and  a  charming  little  lady-chapel,  filled  with 
gorgeous  old  glass.  The  sustained  height  of  this 
almost  detached  choir  is  very  noble ;  its  lightness 
and  grace,  its  soaring  symmetry,  carry  the  eye  up  to 
places  in  the  air  from  which  it  is  slow  to  descend. 
Like  Tours,  like  Chartres,  like  Bourges  (apparently 
like  all  the  French  cathedrals,  and  unlike  several 
English  ones).  Le  Mans  is  rich  in  splendid  glass. 
The  beautiful  upper  windows  of  the  choir  make,  far 
aloft,  a  sort  of  gallery  of  pictures,  blooming  with  vivid 
color.  It  is  the  south  transept  that  contains  the 
formless  image — a  clumsy  stone  woman  lying  on  her 
back — winch  purports  to  represent  Queen  Berengaria 
aforesaid. 

The  view  of  the  cathedral  from  the  rear  is,  as  usual, 
very  fine.  A  small  garden  behind  it  masks  its  base  j 
but  you  descend  the  hill  to  a  large  place  de  foire,  ad 
jacent  to  a  fine  old  public  promenade  which  is  known 
as  Les  Jacobins,  a  sort  of  miniature  Tuileries,  where 
I  strolled  for  a  while  in  rectangular  alleys,  destitute 
of  herbage,  and  received  a  deeper  impression  of  van 
ished  things.  The  cathedral,  on  the  pedestal  of  its  hill, 
looks  considerably  farther  than  the  fair-ground  and 
the  Jacobins,  between  the  rather  bare  poles  of  whose 
straightly  planted  trees  you  may  admire  it  at  a  con 
venient  distance.  I  admired  it  till  I  thought  I  should 
remember  it  (better  than  the  event  has  proved),  and 
then  I  wandered  away  and  looked  at  another  curious 
old  church,  Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture.  This  sacred 
edifice  made  a  picture  for  ten  minutes,  but  the  pic 
ture  has  faded  now.  I  reconstruct  a  yellowish-brown 
facade,  and  a  portal  fretted  with  early  sculptures ;  but 
the  details  have  gone  the  way  of  all  incomplete  sensar 


XIII.]  LE   MANS.  95 

HODS.  After  you  have  stood  awhile  in  the  choir  of 
the  cathedral,  there  is  no  sensation  at  Le  Mans  that 
goes  very  far.  For  some  reason  not  now  to  be  traced, 
I  had  looked  for  more  than  this.  I  think  the  reason 
was  to  some  extent  simply  in  the  name  of  the  place ; 
for  names,  on  the  whole,  whether  they  be  good  reasons 
or  not,  are  very  active  ones.  Le  Mans,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken,  has  a  sturdy,  feudal  sound ;  suggests  some 
thing  dark  and  square,  a  vision  of  old  ramparts  and 
gates.  Perhaps  I  had  been  unduly  impressed  by  the 
fact,  accidentally  revealed  to  me,  that  Henry  II.,  first  of 
the  English  Plautagenets,  was  born  there.  Of  course 
it  is  easy  to  assure  one's  self  in  advance,  but  does  it 
not  often  happen  that  one  had  rather  not  be  assured  ? 
There  is  a  pleasure  sometimes  in  running  the  risk  of 
disappointment.  I  took  mine,  such  as  it  was,  quietly 
enough,  while  I  sat  before  dinner  at  the  door  of  one 
of  the  cafes  in  the  market-place  with  a  bitter-et-curagao 
(invaluable  pretext  at  such  an  hour!)  to  keep  me 
company.  I  remember  that  in  this  situation  there 
came  over  me  an  impression  which  both  included 
and  excluded  all  possible  disappointments.  The  af 
ternoon  was  warm  and  still ;  the  air  was  admirably 
soft.  The  good  Manceaux,  in  little  groups  and  pairs, 
were  seated  near  me ;  my  ear  was  soothed  by  the  fine 
shades  of  French  enunciation,  by  the  detached  sylla 
bles  of  that  perfect  tongue.  There  was  nothing  in  par 
ticular  in  the  prospect  to  charm ;  it  was  an  average 
French  view.  Yet  I  felt  a  charm,  a  kind  of  sympa 
thy,  a  sense  of  the  completeness  of  French  life  and 
of  the  lightness  and  brightness  of  the  social  air,  to 
gether  with  a  desire  to  arrive  at  friendly  judgments, 
to  express  a  positive  interest.  I  know  not  why  this 


9G  A.  LITTLE   TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XIV. 

transcendental  mood  should  have  descended  upon 
me  then  and  there ;  but  that  idle  half-hour  in  front 
of  the  cafe,  in  the  mild  October  afternoon,  suffused 
with  human  sounds,  is  perhaps  the  most  definite 
thing  I  brought  away  from  Le  Mans. 


XIV. 

I  AM  shocked  at  finding,  just  after  this  noble  dec 
laration  of  principles  that  in  a  little  note-book  which 
at  that  time  I  carried  about  with  me,  the  celebrated 
city  of  Angers  is  denominateTFh  "sell."  I  reproduce 
this  vulgar  term  with  the  greatest  hesitation,  and 
only  because  it  brings  me  more  quickly  to  my 
point.  This  point  is  that  Angers  belongs  to  the 
disagreeable  class  of  old  towns  that  have  been,  as 
the  English  say,  "done  up."  Not  the  oldness,  but 
the  newness,  of  the  place  is  what  strikes  the  senti 
mental  tourist  to-day,  as  he  wanders  with  irritation 
along  second-rate  boulevards,  looking  vaguely  about 
him  for  absent  gables.  "  Black  Angers,"  in  short,  is  a 
victim  of  modern  improvements,  and  quite  unworthy 
of  its  admirable  name,  —  a  name  which,  like  that 
of  Le  Mans,  had  always  had,  to  my  eyes,  a  highly 
picturesque  value.  It  looks  particularly  well  on 
the  Shakspearean  page  (in  "  King  John  " ),  where  we 
imagine  it  uttered  (though  such  would  not  have 
been  the  utterance  of  the  period)  with  a  fine  old 
insular  accent.  Angers  figures  with  importance  in 
early  English  history :  it  was  the  capital  city  of  the 
Plantagenet  race,  home  of  that  Geoffrey  of  Anjou 


XIV.]  ANGERS.  97 

who  married,  as  second  husband,  the  Empress  Maud, 
daughter  of  Henry  I.  and  competitor  of  Stephen,  and 
became  father  of  Henry  II.,  first  of  the  Plantagenet 
kings,  born,  as  we  have  seen,  at  Le  Mans.  These  facts 
create  a  natural  presumption  that  Angers  will  look 
historic  ;  I  turned  them  over  in  my  mind  as  I  travelled 
in  the  train  from  Le  Mans,  through  a  country  that 
was  really  pretty,  and  looked  more  like  the  usual 
English  than  like  the  usual  French  scenery,  with  its 
fields  cut  up  by  hedges  and  a  considerable  rotundity 
in  its  trees.  On  my  way  from  the  station  to  the 
hotel,  however,  it  became  plain  that  I  should  lack  a 
good  pretext  for  passing  that  night  at  the  Cheval 
Blanc ;  I  foresaw  that  I  should  have  contented  myself 
before  the  end  of  the  day.  I  remained  at  the  White 
Horse  only  long  enough  to  discover  that  it  was  an 
exceptionally  good  provincial  inn,  one  of  the  best 
that  I  encountered  during  six  weeks  spent  in  these 
establishments. 

"  Stupidly  and  vulgarly  modernized,"  — that  is  an 
other  phrase  from  my  note-book,  and  note-books  are 
not  obliged  to  be  reasonable.  "  There  are  some  nar 
row  and  tortuous  streets,  with  a  few  curious  old 
houses,"  I  continue  to  quote ;  "  there  is  a  castle,  of 
which'  the  exterior  is  most  extraordinary,  and  there 
is  a  cathedral  of  moderate  interest."  It  is  fair  to 
say  that  the  Chateau  d' Angers  is  by  itself  worth  a 
pilgrimage ;  the  only  drawback  is  that  you  have  seen 
it  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  You  cannot  do  more 
than  look  at  it,  and  one  good  look  does  your  business. 
It  has  no  beauty,  no  grace,  no  detail,  nothing  that 
charms  or  detains  you ;  it  is  simply  very  old  and  very 
big,  —  so  big  and  so  old  that  this  simple  impression 

7 


98  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XIV. 

is  enough,  and  it  takes  its  place  in  your  recollections 
as  a  perfect  specimen  of  a  superannuated  stronghold. 
It  stands  at  one  end  of  the  town,  surrounded  by  a 
huge,  deep  moat,  which  originally  contained  the  wa 
ters  of  the  Maine,  now  divided  from  it  by  a  quay, 
The  water-front  of  Angers  is  poor,  —  wanting  in  color 
and  in  movement;  and  there  is  always  an  effect  of 
perversity  in  a  town  lying  near  a  great  river  and  yet 
not  upon  it.  The  Loire  is  a  few  miles  off;  but  Angers 
contents  itself  with  a  meagre  affluent  of  that  stream. 
The  effect  was  naturally  much  better  when  the  huge, 
dark  mass  of  the  castle,  with  its  seventeen  prodi 
gious  towers,  rose  out  of  the  protecting  flood.  These 
towers  are  of  tremendous  girth  and  solidity;  they 
are  encircled  with  great  bands,  or  hoops,  of  white 
stone,  and  are  much  enlarged  at  the  base.  Between 
them  hang  vast  curtains  of  infinitely  old-looking  ma 
sonry,  apparently  a  dense  conglomeration  of  slate, 
the  material  of  which  the  town  was  originally  built 
(thanks  to  rich  quarries  in  the  neighborhood),  and  to 
which  it  owed  its  appellation  of  the  Black.  There 
are  no  windows,  no  apertures,  and  to-day  no  battle 
ments  nor  roofs.  These  accessories  were  removed 
by  Henry  III.,  so  that,  in  spite  of  its  grimness  and 
blackness,  the  place  has  not  even  the  interest  of 
looking  like  a  prison;  it  being,  as  I  supposed,  the 
essence  of  a  prison  not  to  be  open  to  the  sky.  The 
only  features  of  the  enormous  structure  are  the  blank, 
sombre  stretches  and  protrusions  of  wall,  the  effect 
of  which,  on  so  large  a  scale,  is  strange  and  striking. 
Begun  by  Philip  Augustus,  and  terminated  by  St. 
Louis,  the  Chateau  d' Angers  has  of  course  a  great  deal 
of  history.  The  luckless  Fouquet,  the  extravagant 


XIV.]  ANGERS.  99 

minister  of  finance  of  Louis  XIV.,  whose  fall  from 
the  heights  of  grandeur  was  so  sudden  and  complete, 
was  confined  here  in  1661,  just  after  his  arrest,  which 
had  taken  place  at  Nantes.  Here,  also,  Huguenots 
and  Vendeans  have  suffered  effective  captivity. 

I  walked  round  the  parapet  which  protects  the 
outer  edge  of  the  moat  (it  is  all  up  hill,  and  the  moat 
deepens  and  deepens),  till  I  came  to  the  entrance 
which  faces  the  town,  and  which  is  as  bare  and 
strong  as  the  rest.  The  concierge  took  me  into  .the 
court ;  but  there  was  nothing  to  see.  The  place  is 
used  as  a  magazine  of  ammunition,  and  the  yard 
contains  a  multitude  of  ugly  buildings.  The  only 
thing  to  do  is  to  walk  round  the  bastions  for  the 

O 

view ;  but  at  the  moment  of  my  visit  the  weather 
was  thick,  and  the  bastions  began  and  ended  with 
themselves.  So  I  came  out  and  took  another  look  at 
the  big,  black  exterior,  buttressed  with  white-ribbed 
towers,  and  perceived  that  a  desperate  sketcher  might 
extract  a  picture  from  it,  especially  if  he  were  to 
bring  in,  as  they  say,  the  little  black  bronze  statue  of 
the  good  King  Rene  (a  weak  production  of  David 
d'Angers),  which,  standing  within  sight,  ornaments 
the  melancholy  faubourg.  He  would  do  much  better, 
however,  with  the  very  striking  old  timbered  house  (I 
suppose  of  the  fifteenth  century)  which  is  called  the 
Maison  d'Adam,  and  is  easily  the  first  specimen  at 
Angers  of  the  domestic  architecture  of  the  past.  This 
admirable  house,  in  the  centre  of  the  town,  gabled, 
elaborately  timbered,  and  much  restored,  is  a  really 
imposing  monument.  The  basement  is  occupied  by 
a  linen-draper,  who  flourishes  under  the  auspicious 
sign  of  the  Mere  de  Famille  ;  and  above  his  shop  the 


100  A   LITTLE   TOUR   IN   FRANCE.  [XIV. 

tall  front  rises  in  five  overhanging  stories.  As  the 
house  occupies  the  angle  of  a  little  place,  this  front 
is  double,  and  the  black  beams  and  wooden  supports, 
displayed  over  a  large  surface  and  carved  and  inter 
laced,  have  a  high  picturesqueness.  The  Maison 
d'Adain  is  quite  in  the  grand  style,  and  I  am  sorry  to 
say  I  failed  to  learn  what  history  attaches  to  its  name. 
If  I  spoke  just  above  of  the  cathedral  as  "  moderate," 
I  suppose  I  should  beg  its  pardon;  for  this  serious 
charge  was  probably  prompted  by  the  fact  that  it  con 
sists  only  of  a  nave,  without  side  aisles.  A  little 
reflection  now  convinces  me  that  such  a  form  is  a 
distinction ;  and,  indeed,  I  find  it  mentioned,  rather 
inconsistently,  in  my  note-book,  a  little  further  on,  as 
"  extremely  simple  and  grand."  The  nave  is  spoken 
of  in  the  same  volume  as  "  big,  serious,  and  gothic," 
though  the  choir  and  transepts  are  noted  as  very 
shallow.  But  it  is  not  denied  that  the  air  of  the 
whole  thing  is  original  and  striking;  and  it  would 
therefore  appear,  after  all,  that  the  cathedral  of  An 
gers,  built  during  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries, 
is  a  sufficiently  honorable  church ;  the  more  that  its 
high  west  front,  adorned  with  a  very  primitive  gothic 
portal,  supports  two  elegant  tapering  spires,  between 
which,  unfortunately,  an  ugly  modern  pavilion  has 
been  inserted. 

I  remember  nothing  else  at  Angers  but  the  curious 
old  Cafe*  Serin,  where,  after  I  had  had  my  dinner 
at  the  inn,  I  went  and  waited  for  the  train  which, 
at  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening,  was  to  convey  me,  in  a 
couple  of  hours,  to  Nantes,  —  an. establishment  re 
markable  for  its  great  size  and  its  air  of  tarnished 
splendor,  its  brown  gilding  and  smoky  frescos,  as 


XV.]  NANTES.  101 

also  for  the  fact  that  it  was  hidden  away  on  the 
second  floor  of  an  unassuming  house  in  an  unillumi- 
nated  street.  It  hardly  seemed  a  place  where  you 
would  drop  in ;  but  when  once  you  had  found  it,  it 
presented  itself,  with  the  cathedral,  the  castle,  and 
the  Maison  d'Adain,  as  one  of  the  historical  monu 
ments  of  Angers. 


XV. 

IF  I  spent  two  nights  at  Nantes,  it  was  for  reasons 
of  convenience  rather  than  of  sentiment ;  though, 
indeed,  I  spent  them  in  a  big  circular  room  which 
had  a  stately,  lofty,  last-century  look,  —  a  look  that 
consoled  me  a  little  for  the  whole  place  being  dirty. 
The  high,  old-fashioned  inn  (it  had  a  huge,  windy 
porte-cochere,  and  you  climbed  a  vast  black  stone 
staircase  to  get  to  your  room)  looked  out  on  a  dull 
square,  surrounded  with  other  tall  houses,  and  occu 
pied  on  one  side  by  the  theatre,  a  pompous  build 
ing,  decorated  with  columns  and  statues  of  the 
muses.  Nantes  belongs  to  the  class  of  towns  which 
are  always  spoken  of  as  "  fine,"  and  its  position  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Loire  gives  it,  I  believe,  much 
commercial  movement.  It  is  a  spacious,  rather  reg 
ular  city,  looking,  in  the  parts  that  I  traversed, 
neither  very  fresh  nor  very  venerable.  It  derives 
its  principal  character  from  the  handsome  quays  on 
the  Loire,  which  are  overhung  with  tall  eighteenth- 
century  houses  (very  numerous,  too,  in  the  other 
streets),  —  houses  with  big  entresols  marked  by  arched 
windows,  classic  pediments,  balcony-rails  of  fine  old 


102  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XV. 

iron-work.     These  features  exist  in  still  better  form 
at  Bordeaux ;  but,  putting  Bordeaux  aside,  Nantes  is 
q  uite  architectural.    The  view  up  and  down  the  quays 
has  the  cool,  neutral  tone  of  color  that  one  finds  so 
often  in  French  water-side  places,  —  the  bright  gray- 
ness  which  is  the  tone  of  French  landscape  art.     The 
whole  city   has  rather  a  grand,  or  at  least  an  emi 
nently  well-established  air.     During  a  day  passed  in  it 
of  course  I  had  time  to  go  to  the  Musee  ;  the  more  so 
that  I  have  a  weakness  for  provincial  museums,  —  a 
sentiment  that  depends  but  little  on  the  quality  of  the 
collection.     The  pictures  may  be  bad,  but  the  place 
is  often  curious  ;  and,  indeed,  from  bad  pictures,  in 
certain  moods  of  the  mind,  there  is  a  degree  of  enter 
tainment  to  be  derived.     If  they  are  tolerably  old, 
they   are   often   touching •    but  they    must   have   a 
relative  antiquity,  for   I   confess  I   can  do  nothing 
with  works  of  art  of  which  the  badness  is  of  recent 
origin.     The  cool,  still,  empty  chambers   in   which 
indifferent  collections  are  apt  to  be  preserved,  the 
red  brick  tiles,  the  diffused  light,  the  musty  odor, 
the    mementos    around    you   of  dead   fashions,   the 
snuffy  custodian  in  a  black  skull  cap,  who  pulls  aside 
a  faded  curtain  to  show  you  the  lustreless  gem  of  the 
museum,  —  these  things  have  a  mild  historical  qual 
ity,  and  the  sallow  canvases  after  all  illustrate  some 
thing.     Many  of  those  in   the   museum   of  Nantes 
illustrate  the  taste  of  a  successful  warrior ;    having 
been  bequeathed  to  the  city  by  Napoleon's  marshal, 
Clarke    (created   Due   de   Feltre).      In    addition   to 
these  there  is  the  usual  number  of  specimens  of  the 
contemporary  French  school,  culled  from  the  annual 
Salons  and  presented  to  the  museum  by  the  State. 


XV.]  NANTES.  103 

Wherever  tlie  traveller  goes,  in  France,  lie  is  re 
minded  of  this  very  honorable  practice,  —  the  pur 
chase  by  the  Government  of  a  certain  number  of 
"  pictures  of  the  year,"  which  are  presently  dis 
tributed  in  the  provinces.  Governments  succeed 
each  other  and  bid  for  success  by  different  devices ; 
but  the  "patronage  of  art"  is  a  plank,  as  we  should 
say  here,  in  every  platform.  The  works  of  art  are 
often  ill-selected,  —  there  is  an  official  taste  which 
you  immediately  recognize,  —  but  the  custom  is  es 
sentially  liberal,  and  a  government  which  should 
neglect  it  would  be  felt  to  be  painfully  common. 
The  only  thing  in  this  particular  Musee  that  I  re 
member  is  a  fine  portrait  of  a  woman,  by  Ingres,  — 
very  flat  and  Chinese,  but  with  an  interest  of  line 
and  a  great  deal  of  style. 

There  is  a  castle  at  Nantes  which  resembles  in 
some  degree  that  of  Angers,  but  has,  without,  much 
less  of  the  impressiveness  of  great  size,  and,  within, 
much  more  interest  of  detail.  The  court  contains  the 
remains  of  a  very  fine  piece  of  late  gothic,  a  tall  ele 
gant  building  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  chateau 
is  naturally  not  wanting  in  history.  It  was  the 
residence  of  the  old  Dukes  of  Brittany,  and  was 
brought,  with  the  rest  of  the  province,  by  the  Duch 
ess  Anne,  the  last  representative  of  that  race,  as  her 
dowry,  to  Charles  VIII.  I  read  in  the  excellent 
hand-book  of  M.  Joanne  that  it  has  been  visited  by 
almost  every  one  of  the  kings  of  France,  from  Louis 
XI.  downward ;  and  also  that  it  has  served  as  a 
place  of  sojourn  less  voluntary  on  the  part  of  various 
other  distinguished  persons,  from  the  horrible  Mare- 
chal  de  Ketz,  who  in  the  fifteenth  century  was  exe- 


104  A  LITTLE   TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XV. 

cuted  at  Nantes  for  the  murder  of  a  couple  of  hun 
dred  young  children,  sacrificed  in  abominable  rites,  to 
the  ardent  Duchess  of  Berry,  mother  of  the  Count  of 
Chambord,  who  was  confined  there  for  a  few  hours  in 
1832,  just  after  her  arrest  in  a  neighboring  house. 
I  looked  at  the  house  in  question  —  you  may  see  it 
from  the  platform  in  front  of  the  chateau  —  and  tried 
to  figure  to  myself  that  embarrassing  scene.  The 
duchess,  after  having  unsuccessfully  raised  the  stand 
ard  of  revolt  (for  the  exiled  Bourbons),  in  the  legiti 
mist  Bretagne,  and  being  "  wanted,"  as  the  phrase  is, 
by  the  police  of  Louis  Philippe,  had  hidden  herself 
in  a  small  but  loyal  house  at  Nantes,  where,  at  the 
end  of  five  months  of  seclusion,  she  was  betrayed, 
for  gold,  to  the  austere  M.  Guizot,  by  one  of  her  ser 
vants,  an  Alsatian  Jew  named  Deutz.  For  many 
hours  before  her  capture  she  had  been  compressed 
into  an  interstice  behind  a  fireplace,  and  by  the  time 
she  was  drawn  forth  into  the  light  she  had  been  omi 
nously  scorched.  The  man  who  showed  me  the  castle 
indicated  also  another  historic  spot,  a  house  with  lit 
tle  tourelles,  on  the  Quai  de  la  Fosse,  in  which  Henry 
IV.  is  said  to  have  signed  the  Edict  of  Nantes.  I  am, 
however,  not  in  a  position  to  answer  for  this  pedigree. 
There  is  another  point  in  the  history  of  the  fine 
old  houses  which  command  the  Loire,  of  which,  I 
suppose,  one  may  be  tolerably  sure ;  that  is,  their 
having,  placid  as  they  stand  there  to-day,  looked 
down  on  the  horrors  of  the  Terror  of  1793,  the  bloody 
reign  of  the  monster  Carrier  and  his  infamous  noyadcs. 
The  most  hideous  episode  of  the  Eevolution  was  en 
acted  at  Nantes,  where  hundreds  of  men  and  women, 
tied  together  in  couples,  were  set  afloat  upon  rafts 


XV.]  NANTES.  105 

and  sunk  to  the  bottom  of  the  Loire.  The  tall 
eighteenth-century  house,  full  of  the  air  nolle,  in 
France  always  reminds  me  of  those  dreadful  years,  — 
of  the  street-scenes  of  the  Ee volution.  Superficially, 
the  association  is  incongruous,  for  nothing  could  be 
more  formal  and  decorous  than  the  patent  expression 
of  these  eligible  residences.  But  whenever  I  have  a 
vision  of  prisoners  bound  on  tumbrels  that  jolt  slowly 
to  the  scaffold,  of  heads  carried  on  pikes,  of  groups 
of  heated  citoyennes  shaking  their  fists  at  closed 
coach-windows,  I  see  in  the  background  the  well- 
ordered  features  of  the  architecture  of  the  period,  — 
the  clear  gray  stone,  the  high  pilasters,  the  arching 
lines  of  the  entresol,  the  classic  pediment,  the  slate- 
covered  attic.  There  is  not  much  architecture  at 
Nantes  except  the  domestic.  The  cathedral,  with  a 
rough  west  front  and  stunted  towers,  makes  no  im 
pression  as  you  approach  it.  It  is  true  that  it  does  its 
best  to  recover  its  reputation  as  soon  as  you  have 
passed  the  threshold.  Begun  in  1434  and  finished 
about  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  as  I  discover  in 
Murray,  it  has  a  magnificent  nave,  not  of  great  length, 
but  of  extraordinary  height  and  lightness.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  has  no  choir  whatever.  There  is  much 
entertainment  in  France  in  seeing  what  a  cathedral 
will  take  upon  itself  to  possess  or  to  lack ;  for.  it 
is  only  the  smaller  number  that  have  the  full  com 
plement  of  features.  Some  have  a  very  fine  nave 
and  no  choir ;  others  a  very  fine  choir  and  no  nave. 
Some  have  a  rich  outside  and  nothing  within ;  others 
a  very  blank  face  and  a  very  glowing  heart.  There 
are  a  hundred  possibilities  of  poverty  arid  wealth,  and 
they  make  the  most  unexpected  combinations. 


106  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XV. 

The  great  treasure  of  Nantes  is  the  two  noble  se 
pulchral  monuments  which  occupy  either  transept,  and 
one  of  which  has  (in  its  nobleness)  the  rare  distinc 
tion  of  being  a  production  of  our  own  time.  On  the 
south  side  stands  the  tomb  of  Francis  II.,  the  last  of 
the  Dukes  of  Brittany,  and  of  his  second  wife,  Mar 
garet  of  Foix,  erected  in  1507  by  their  daughter  Anne, 
whom  we  have  encountered  already  at  the  Chateau 
de  Nantes,  where  she  was  born ;  at  Langeais,  where 
she  married  her  first  husband;  at  Ainboise,  where 
she  lost  him ;  at  Blois,  where  she  married  her  second, 
the  "  good  "  Louis  XII.,  who  divorced  an  impeccable 
spouse  to  make  room  for  her,  and  where  she  herself 
died.  Transferred  to  the  cathedral  from  a  demolished 
convent,  this  monument,  the  masterpiece  of  Michel 
Colomb,  author  of  the  charming  tomb  of  the  children 
of  Charles  VIII.  and  the  aforesaid  Anne,  which  we 
admired  at  Saint  Gatien  of  Tours,  is  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  works  of  the  French  Eenaissance.  It  has 
a  splendid  effect,  and  is  in  perfect  preservation.  A 
great  table  of  black  marble  supports  the  reclining 
figures  of  the  duke  and  duchess,  who  lie  there  peace 
fully  and  majestically,  in  their  robes  and  crowns,  with 
their  heads  each  on  a  cushion,  the  pair  of  which  are 
supported,  from  behind,  by  three  charming  little 
kneeling  angels ;  at  the  foot  of  the  quiet  couple  are 
a  lion  and  a  greyhound,  with  heraldic  devices.  At 
each  of  the  angles  of  the  table  is  a  large  figure  in 
white  marble  of  a  woman  elaborately  dressed,  with  a 
symbolic  meaning ,  and  these  figures,  with  their  con 
temporary  faces  and  clothes,  which  give  them  the  air 
of  realistic  portraits,  are  truthful  and  living,  if  not  re 
markably  beautiful.  Eound  the  sides  of  the  tomb 


XV.]  NANTES.  107 

are  small  images  of  the  apostles.  There  is  a  kind  of 
masculine  completeness  in  the  work,  and  a  certain 
robustness  of  taste. 

In- nothing  were  the  sculptors  of  the  Eenaissance 
more  fortunate  than  in  being  in  advance  of  us  with 
their  tombs  :  they  have  left  us  nothing  to  say  in  re 
gard  to  the  great  final  contrast, —  the  contrast  between 
the  immobility  of  death  and  the  trappings  and  honors 
that  survive.  They  expressed  in  every  way  in  which 
it  was  possible  to  express  it  the  solemnity  of  their 
conviction  that  the  marble  image  was  a  part  of  the 
personal  greatness  of  the  defunct,  and  the  protection, 
the  redemption,  of  his  memory.  A  modern  tomb,  in 
comparison,  is  a  sceptical  affair ;  it  insists  too  little 
on  the  honors.  I  say  this  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that 
one  has  only  to  step  across  the  cathedral  of  Nantes 
to  stand  in  the  presence  of  one  of  the  purest  and 
most  touching  of  modern  tombs.  Catholic  Brittany 
has  erected  in  the  opposite  transept  a  monument  to 
one  of  the  most  devoted  of  her  sons,  General  de  La- 
moriciere,  the  defender  of  the  Pope,  the  vanquished 
of  Castelfidardo.  This  noble  work,  from  the  hand  of 
Paul  Dubois,  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  that  new 
generation  of  sculptors  who  have  revived  in  France 
an  art  of  which  our  overdressed  century  had  begun  to 
despair,  has  every  merit  but  the  absence  of  a  certain 
prime  feeling.  It  is  the  echo  of  an  earlier  tune,  —  an 
echo  with  a  beautiful  cadence.  Under  a  renaissance 
canopy  of  white  marble,  elaborately  worked  with  ara 
besques  and  cherubs,  in  a  relief  so  low  that  it  gives 
the  work  a  certain  look  of  being  softened  and  worn 
by  time,  lies  the  body  of  the  Breton  soldier,  with  a 
crucifix  clasped  to  his  breast  and  a  shroud  thrown 


108  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XV. 

over  his  body.  At  each  of  the  angles  sits  a  figure  in 
bronze,  the  two  best  of  which,  representing  Charity 
and  Military  Courage,  had  given  me  extraordinary 
pleasure  when  they  were  exhibited  (in  the  clay)  in 
the  Salon  of  1876.  They  are  admirably  cast,  and 
they  have  a  certain  greatness:  the  one,  a  serene, 
robust  young  mother,  beautiful  in  line  and  attitude ; 
the  other,  a  lean  and  vigilant  young  man,  in  a  helmet 
that  overshadows  his  serious  eyes,  resting  an  out 
stretched  arm,  an  admirable  military  member,  upon 
the  hilt  of  a  sword.  These  figures  contain  abundant 
assurance  that  M.  Paul  Dubois  has  been  attentive 
to  Michael  Angelo,  whom  we  have  all  heard  called 
a  splendid  example  but  a  bad  model.  The  visor- 
shadowed  face  of  his  warrior  is  more  or  less  a  remi 
niscence  of  the  figure  on  the  tomb  of  Lorenzo  de' 
Medici  at  Florence;  but  it  is  doubtless  none  the 
worse  for  that.  The  interest  of  the  work  of  Paul  Du 
bois  is  its  peculiar  seriousness,  a  kind  of  moral  good 
faith  which  is  not  the  commonest  feature  of  Trench 
art,  and  which,  united  as  it  is  in  this  case  with  ex 
ceeding  knowledge  and  a  remarkable  sense  of  form, 
produces  an  impression  of  deep  refinement.  The 
whole  monument  is  a  proof  of  exquisitely  careful 
study ;  but  I  am  not  sure  that  this  impression  on  the 
part  of  the  spectator  is  altogether  a  happy  one.  It 
explains  much  of  its  great  beauty,  and  it  also  explains, 
perhaps,  a  little  of  a  certain  weakness.  That  word, 
however,  is  scarcely  in  place ;  I  only  mean  that  M. 
Dubois  has  made  a  visible  effort,  which  has  been 
most  fruitful.  Simplicity  is  not  always  strength,  and 
our  complicated  modern  genius  contains  treasures  of 
intention.  This  fathomless  modern  element  is  an 


XVI.]  LA  ROCHELLE.  109 

immense  charm  on  the  part  of  M.  Paul  Dubois.  I  am 
lost  in  admiration  of  the  deep  esthetic  experience,  the 
enlightenment  of  taste,  revealed  by  such  work.  After 
that,  I  only  hope  that  Giuseppe  Garibaldi  may  have 
a  monument  as  fair. 


XVI. 

To  go  from  Nantes  to  La  Eochelle  you  travel 
straight  southward,  across  the  historic  locage  of  La 
Vendee,  the  home  of  royalist  bush-fighting.  The 
country,  which  is  exceedingly  pretty,  bristles  with 
copses,  orchards,  hedges,  and  with  trees  more  spread 
ing  and  sturdy  than  the  traveller  is  apt  to  deem  the 
feathery  foliage  of  France.  It  is  true  that  as  I  pro 
ceeded  it  flattened  out  a  good  deal,  so  that  for  an 
hour  there  was  a  vast  featureless  plain,  which  offered 
me  little  entertainment  beyond  the  general  impres 
sion  that  I  was  approaching  the  Bay  of  Biscay  (from 
which,  in  reality,  I  was  yet  far  distant).  As  we  drew 
near  La  Rochelle,  however,  the  prospect  brightened 
considerably,  and  the  railway  kept  its  course  beside 
a  charming  little  canal,  or  canalized  river,  bordered 
with  trees,  and  with  small,  neat,  bright-colored,  and 
yet  old-fashioned  cottages  and  villas,  which  stood 
back  on  the  further  side,  behind  small  gardens,  hedges, 
painted  palings,  patches  of  turf.  The  whole  effect 
was  Dutch  and  delightful;  and  in  being  delightful, 
though  not  in  being  Dutch,  it  prepared  me  for  the 
charms  of  La  Rochelle,  which  from  the  moment  I 
entered  it  I  perceived  to  be  a  fascinating  little  town, 
a  most  -original  mixture  of  brightness  and  dulness. 


110  A  LITTLE  TOUK  IN  FRANCE.  [XVL 

Part  of  its  brightness  comes  from  its  being  extraor 
dinarily  clean,  —  in  which,  after  all,  it  is  Dutch ;  a 
virtue  not  particularly  noticeable  at  Bourges,  Le  Mans, 
and  Angers.  Whenever  I  go  southward,  if  it  be  only 
twenty  miles,  I  begin  to  look  out  for  the  south,  pre 
pared  as  I  am  to  find  the  careless  grace  of  those  lati 
tudes  even  in  things  of  which  it  may  be  said  that 
they  may  be  south  of  something,  but  are  not  southern. 
To  go  from  Boston  to  New  York  (in  this  state  of 
mind)  is  almost  as  soft  a  sensation  as  descending  the 
Italian  side  of  the  Alps ;  and  to  go  from  New  York 
to  Philadelphia  is  to  enter  a  zone  of  tropical  luxu 
riance  and  warmth.  Given  this  absurd  disposition, 
I  could  not  fail  to  flatter  myself,  on  reaching  La  Ro- 
chelle,  that  I  was  already  in  the  Midi,  and  to  perceive 
in  everything,  in  the  language  of  the  country,  the 
caractere  meridional  Really,  a  great  many  things 
had  a  hint  of  it.  For  that  matter,  it  seems  to  me 
that  to  arrive  in  the  south  at  a  bound  —  to  wake  up 
there,  as  it  were  —  would  be  a  very  imperfect  pleas 
ure.  The  full  pleasure  is  to  approach  by  stages  and 
gradations ;  to  observe  the  successive  shades  of  differ 
ence  by  which  it  ceases  to  be  the  north.  These  shades 
are  exceedingly  fine,  but  your  true  south-lover  has  an 
eye  for  them  all.  If  he  perceive  them  at  New  York 
and  Philadelphia,  —  we  imagine  him  boldly  as  liber 
ated  from  Boston,  —  how  could  he  fail  to  perceive 
them  at  La  Rochelle  ?  The  streets  of  this  dear  little 
city  are  lined  with  arcades,  —  good,  big,  straddling 
arcades  of  stone,  such  as  befit  a  land  of  hot  summers, 
and  which  recalled  to  me,  not  to  go  further,  the  dusky 
porticos  of  Bayonne.  It  contains,  moreover,  a  great 
wide  place  d'armcs,  which  looked  for  all  the  world 


XVI.]  LA  EOCHELLE.  Ill 

like  the  piazza  of  some  dead  Italian  town,  empty, 
sunny,  grass-grown,  with  a  row  of  yellow  houses  over 
hanging  it;  an  unfrequented  cafe,  with  a  striped  awn 
ing,  a  tall,  cold,  florid,  uninteresting  cathedral  of  the 
eighteenth  century  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  a 
shady  walk,  which  forms  part  of  an  old  rampart.  I 
followed  this  walk  for  some  time,  under  the  stunted 
trees,  beside  the  grass-covered  bastions;  it  is  very 
charming,  winding  and  wandering,  always  with  trees. 
Beneath  the  rampart  is  a  tidal  river,  and  on  the  other 
side,  for  a  long  distance,  the  mossy  walls  of  the  im 
mense  garden  of  a  seminary.  Three  hundred  years 
ago,  La  Eochelle  was  the  great  French  stronghold  of 
Protestantism ;  but  to-day  it  appears  to  be  a  nursery 
of  Papists. 

The  walk  upon  the  rampart  led  me  round  to  one 
of  the  gates  of  the  town,  where  I  found  some  small 
modern  fortifications  and  sundry  red-legged  soldiers, 
and,  beyond  the  fortifications,  another  shady  walk,  — 
a  mail,  as  the  French  say,  as  well  as  a  champ  de 
manoeuvre,  —  on  which  latter  expanse  the  poor  little 
red-legs  were  doing  their  exercise.  It  was  all  very 
quiet  and  very  picturesque,  rather  in  miniature ;  and 
at  once  very  tidy  and  a  little  out  of  repair.  This, 
however,  was  but  a  meagre  back-view  of  La  Eochelle, 
or  poor  side-view  at  best.  There  are  other  gates  than 
the  small  fortified  aperture  just  mentioned ;  one  of 
them,  an  old  gray  arch  beneath  a  fine  clock-tower,  I 
had  passed  through  on  my  way  from  the  station. 
This  picturesque  Tour  de  1'Horloge  separates  the  town 
proper  from  the  port ;  for  beyond  the  old  gray  arch, 
the  place  presents  its  bright,  expressive  little  face  to 
the  sea.  I  had  a  charming  walk  about  the  harbor, 


112  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XVI. 

and  along  the  stone  piers  and  sea-walls  that  shut 
it  in.  This  indeed,  to  take  things  in  their  order,  was 
after  I  had  had  my  breakfast  (which  I  took  on  arriv 
ing)  and  after  I  had  been  to  the  hotel  de  mile.  The 
inn  had  a  long  narrow  garden  behind  it,  with  some 
very  tall  trees ;  and  passing  through  this  garden  to  a 
dim  and  secluded  salle  a  manger,  buried  in  the  heavy 
shade,  I  had,  while  I  sat  at  my  repast,  a  feeling  of 
seclusion  which  amounted  almost  to  a  sense  of  in 
carceration.  I  lost  this  sense,  however,  after  I  had 
paid  my  bill,  and  went  out  to  look  for  traces  of  the 
famous  siege,  which  is  the  principal  title  of  La  Eo 
chelle  to  renown.  I  had  come  thither  partly  because 
I  thought  it  would  be  interesting  to  stand  for  a 
few  moments  in  so  gallant  a  spot,  and  partly  because, 
I  confess,  I  had  a  curiosity  to  see  what  had  been 
the  starting-point  of  the  Huguenot  emigrants  who 
founded  the  town  of  New  Eochelle  in  the  State  of 
New  York,  a  place  in  which  I  had  passed  certain 
memorable  hours.  It  was  strange  to  think,  as  I 
strolled  through  the  peaceful  little  port,  that  these 
quiet  waters,  during  the  wars  of  religion,  had  swelled 
with  a  formidable  naval  power.  The  Eochelais  had 
fleets  and  admirals,  and  their  stout  little  Protestant 
bottoms  carried  defiance  up  and  down. 

To  say  that  I  found  any  traces  of  the  siege  would 
be  to  misrepresent  the  taste  for  vivid  whitewash  by 
which  La  Eochelle  is  distinguished  to-day.  The 
only  trace  is  the  dent  in  the  marble  top  of  the  table 
on  which,  in  the  hotel  de  mile,  Jean  Guiton,  the 
mayor  of  the  city,  brought  down  his  dagger  with  an 
oath,  when  in  1628  the  vessels  and  regiments  of 
Eichelieu  closed  about  it  on  sea  and  land.  This 


XVI.]  LA   IIOCHELLE.  113 

terrible  functionary  was  the  soul  of  the  resistance ; 
he  held  out  from  February  to  October,  in  the  midst 
of  pestilence  and  famine.  The  whole  episode  has  a 
brilliant  place  among  the  sieges  of  history;  it  has 
been  related  a  hundred  times,  and  I  may  only  glance 
at  it  and  pass.  I  limit  my  ambition,  in  these  light 
pages,  to  speaking  of  those  things  of  which  I  have 
personally  received  an  impression;  and  I  have  no 
such  impression  of  the  defence  of  La  Eochelle.  The 
hotel  de  ville  is  a  pretty  little  building,  in  the  style 
of  the  Eenaissance  of  Francis  I. ;  but  it  has  left 
much  of  its  interest  in  the  hands  of  the  restorers. 
It  has  been  "  done  up "  without  mercy ;  its  natural 
place  would  be  at  Eochelle  the  New.  A  sort  of 
battlemented  curtain,  flanked  with  turrets,  divides  it 
from  the  street  and  contains  a  low  door  (a  low  door 
in  a  high  wall  is  always  felicitous),  which  admits  you 
to  an  inner  court,  where  you  discover  the  face  of  the 
building.  It  has  statues  set  into  it,  and  is  raised 
upon  a  very  low  and  very  deep  arcade.  The  prin 
cipal  function  of  the  deferential  old  portress  who 
conducts  you  over  the  place  is  to  call  your  attention 
to  the  indented  table  of  Jean  Guiton:  but  she  shows 
you  other  objects  of  interest  besides.  The  interior  is 
absolutely  new  and  extremely  sumptuous,  abounding 
in  tapestries,  upholstery,  morocco,  velvet,  satin.  This 
is  especially  the  case  with  a  really  beautiful  grande 
salle,  where,  surrounded  with  the  most  expensive  up 
holstery,  the  mayor  holds  his  official  receptions.  (So, 
at  least,  said  my  worthy  portress.)  The  mayors  of 
La  Eochelle  appear  to  have  changed  a  good  deal  since 
the  days  of  the  grim  Guiton ;  but  these  evidences  of 
municipal  splendor  are  interesting  for  the  light  they 

8 


114  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XVI. 

throw  on  French  manners.  Imagine  the  mayor  of 
an  English  or  an  American  town  of  twenty  thousand 
inhabitants  holding  magisterial  soirees  in  the  town- 
hall  !  The  said  grande  salle,  which  is  unchanged  in 
form  and  in  its  larger  features,  is,  I  believe,  the  room 
in  which  the  Eochelais  debated  as  to  whether  they 
should  shut  themselves  up,  and  decided  in  the  affirm 
ative.  The  table  and  chair  of  Jean  Guiton  have  been 
restored,  like  everything  else,  and  are  very  elegant 
and  coquettish  pieces  of  furniture,  —  incongruous  rel 
ics  of  a  season  of  starvation  and  blood.  I  believe 
that  Protestantism  is  somewhat  shrunken  to-day  at 
La  Eochelle,  and  lias  taken  refuge  mainly  in  the 
haute  societe  and  in  a  single  place  of  worship.  There 
was  nothing  particular  to  remind  me  of  its  supposed 
austerity  as,  after  leaving  the  hotel  de  ville,  I  walked 
along  the  empty  porticos  and  out  of  the' Tour  de 
1'Hoiioge,  which  I  have  already  mentioned.  If  I 
stopped  and  looked  up  at  this  venerable  monument, 
it  was  not  to  ascertain  the  hour,  for  I  foresaw  that  I 
should  have  more  time  at  La  Eochelle  than  I  knew 
what  to  do  with ;  but  because  its  high,  gray,  weather- 
beaten  face  was  an  obvious  subject  for  a  sketch. 

The  little  port,  which  has  two  basins,  and  is  ac 
cessible  only  to  vessels  of  light  tonnage,  had  a  certain 
gayety  and  as  much  local  color  as  you  please.  lusher 
folk  of  picturesque  type  were  strolling  about,  most 
of  them  Bretons  ;  several  of  the  men  with  handsome, 
simple  faces,  not  at  all  brutal,  and  with  a  splendid 
brownness,  —  the  golden-brown  color,  on  cheek  and 
beard,  that  you  see  on  an  old  Venetian  sail.  It  was 
a  squally,  showery  day,  with  sudden  drizzles  of  sun 
shine  ;  rows  of  rich-toned  fishing-smacks  were  drawn 


XVI.]  LA  ROCHELLE.  115 

up  along  the  quays.  The  harbor  is  effective  to  the 
eye  by  reason  of  three  battered  old  towers  which, 
at  different  points,  overhang  it  and  look  infinitely 
weather-washed  and  sea-silvered.  The  most  striking 
of  these,  the  Tour  de  la  Lanterne,  is  a  big  gray  mass, 
of  the  fifteenth  centuiy,  flanked  with  turrets  and 
crowned  with  a  gothic  steeple.  I  found  it  was  called 
by  the  people  of  the  place  the  Tour  des  Quatre  Ser- 
gents,  though  I  know  not  what  connection  it  has 
with  the  touching  history  of  the  four  young  sergeants 
of  the  garrison  of  La  Eochelle,  who  were  arrested  in 
1821  as  conspirators  against  the  Government  of  the 
Bourbons,  and  executed,  amid  general  indignation, 
in  Paris  in  the  following  year.  The  quaint  little 
walk,  with  its  label  of  Rue  sur  les  Murs,  to  which 
one  ascends  from  beside  the  Grosse  Horloge,  leads  to 
this  curious  Tour  de  la  Lauterne  and  passes  under  it. 
This  walk  has  the  top  of  the  old  town-wall,  toward 
the  sea,  for  a  parapet  on  one  side,  and  is  bordered  on 
the  other  with  decent  but  irregular  little  tenements 
of  fishermen,  where  brown  old  women,  whose  caps 
are  as  white  as  if  they  were  painted,  seem  chiefly 
in  possession.  In  this  direction  there  is  a  very  pretty 
stretch  of  shore,  out  of  the  town,  through  the  fortifi 
cations  (which  are  Vauban's,  by  the  way) ;  through, 
also,  a  diminutive  public  garden  or  straggling  shrub 
bery,  which  edges  the  water  and  carries  its  stunted 
verdure  as  far  as  a  big  Etablissement  des  Bains.  It 
was  too  late  in  the  year  to  bathe,  and  the  Etablisse 
ment  had  the  bankrupt  aspect  which  belongs  to  such 
places  out  of  the  season  ;  so  I  turned  my  back  upon 
it,  and  gained,  by  a  circuit  in  the  course  of  which 
there  were  sundry  water-side  items  to  observe,  the 


116  A  LITTLE   TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XVII. 

other  side  of  the  cheery  little  port,  where  there  is 
a  long  breakwater  and  a  still  longer  sea-wall,  on 
which  I  walked  awhile,  to  inhale  the  strong,  salt 
breath  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  La  Eoclielle  serves,  in 
the  months  of  July  and  August,  as  a  station  cle  bains 
for  a  modest  provincial  society;  and,  putting  aside 
the  question  of  inns,  it  must  be  charming  on  summer 
afternoons. 

XVII. 

IT  is  an  injustice  to  Poitiers  to  approach  her  by 
night,  as  I  did  some  three  hours  after  leaving  La 
Eochelle  ;  for  what  Poitiers  has  of  best,  as  they  would 
say  at  Poitiers,  is  the  appearance  she  presents  to  the 
arriving  stranger  who  puts  his  head  out  of  the  win 
dow  of  the  train.     I  gazed  into  the  gloom  from  such 
an  aperture  before  we  got  into  the  station,  for  I  re 
membered  the  impression  received  on  another  occa 
sion;  but  I  saw  nothing  save  the  universal  night, 
spotted  here  and  there  with  an  ugly  railway  lamp. 
It  was  only  as  I  departed,  the  following  day,  that  I 
assured  myself  that  Poitiers  still  makes  something  of 
the  figure  she  ought  on  the  summit  of  her  consider 
able  hill.     I  have  a  kindness  for  any  little  group  of 
towers,  any  cluster  of  roofs  and  chimneys,  that  lift 
themselves  from  an  eminence  over  which  a  long  road 
ascends  in  zigzags ;  such  a  picture  creates  for  the  mo 
ment  a  presumption  that  you  are  in  Italy,  and  even 
leads  you  to  believe  that  if  you  mount  the  winding 
road  you  will  come  to  an  old  town-wall,  an  expanse 
of  creviced  brownness,  and  pass  under  a  gateway  sur 
mounted  by  the  arms  of  a  mediaeval  despot.     Why 


XVII.]  POITIERS.  117 

I  should  find  it  a  pleasure,  in  France,  to  imagine  my 
self  in  Italy,  is  more  than  I  can  say ;  the  illusion  has 
never  lasted  long  enough  to  be  analyzed.  From  the 
bottom  of  its  perch  Poitiers  looks  large  and  high ; 
and  indeed,  the  evening  I  reached  it,  the  intermi 
nable  climb  of  the  omnibus  of  the  hotel  I  had  selected, 
which  I  found  at  the  station,  gave  me  the  measure 
of  its  commanding  position.  This  hotel,  "  magnifique 
construction  ornee  de  statues,"  as  the  Guide-Joanne, 
usually  so  reticent,  takes  the  trouble  to  announce, 
has  an  omnibus,  and,  I  suppose,  has  statues,  though  I 
did  n't  perceive  them ;  but  it  has  very  little  else  save 
immemorial  accumulations  of  dirt.  It  is  magnificent, 
if  you  will,  but  it  is  not  even  relatively  proper ;  and 
a  dirty  inn  has  always  seemed  to  me  the  dirtiest  of 
human  things,  —  it  has  so  many  opportunities  to 
betray  itself. 

Poitiers  covers  a  large  space,  and  is  as  crooked  and 
straggling  as  you  please ;  but  these  advantages  are  not 
accompanied  with  any  very  salient  features  or  any  great 
wealth  of  architecture.  Although  there  are  few  pictur 
esque  houses,  however,  there  are  two  or  three  curious 
old  churches.  Notre  Dame  la  Grande,  in  the  market 
place,  a  small  romanesque  structure  of  the  twelfth  cen 
tury,  has  a  most  interesting  and  venerable  exterior. 
Composed,  like  all  the  churches  of  Poitiers,  of  a  ligLt 
brown  stone  with  a  yellowish  tinge,  it  is  covered 
with  primitive  but  ingenious  sculptures,  and  is  really 
an  impressive  monument.  Within,  it  has  lately  been 
daubed  over  with  the  most  hideous  decorative  paint 
ing  that  was  ever  inflicted  upon  passive  pillars  and 
indifferent  vaults.  This  battered  yet  coherent  little 
edifice  has  the  touching  look  that  resides  in  every- 


118  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XVII. 

thing  supremely  old:  it  has  arrived  at  the  age  at 
which  such  things  cease  to  feel  the  years  ;  the  waves 
of  time  have  worn  its  edges  to  a  kind  of  patient  dul- 
ness ;  there  is  something  mild  and  smooth,  like  the 
stillness,  the  deafness,  of  an  octogenarian,  even  in  its 
rudeness  of  ornament,  and  it  has  become  insensible 
to  differences  of  a  century  or  two.  The  cathedral 
interested  me  much  less  than  Our  Lady  the  Great, 
and  1  have  not  the  spirit  to  go  into  statistics  about 
it.  It  is  not  statistical  to  say  that  the  cathedral 
stands  half-way  down  the  hill  of  Poitiers,  in  a  quiet 
and  grass-grown  place,  with  an  approach  of  crooked 
lanes  and  blank  garden-walls,  and  that  its  most 
striking  dimension  is  the  width  of  its  facade.  This 
width  is  extraordinary,  but  it  fails,  somehow,  to  give 
nobleness  to  the  edifice,  which  looks  within  (Murray 
makes  the  remark)  like  a  large  public  hall.  There 
are  a  nave  and  two  aisles,  the  latter  about  as  high 
as  the  nave ;  and  there  are  some  very  fearful  modern 
pictures,  which  you  may  see  much  better  than  you 
usually  see  those  specimens  of  the  old  masters  that 
lurk  in  glowing  side -chapels,  there  being  no  fine  old 
glass  to  diffuse  a  kindly  gloom.  The  sacristan  of  the 
cathedral  showed  me  something  much  better  than  all 
this  bright  bareness;  he  led  me  a  short  distance  out 
of  it  to  the  small  Temple  de  Saint-Jean,  which  is  the 
most  curious  object  at  Poitiers.  It  is  an  early  Chris 
tian  chapel,  one  of  the  earliest  in  France ;  originally, 
it  would  seem,  —  that  is,  in  the  sixth  or  seventh  cen 
tury,  —  a  baptistery,  but  converted  into  a  church  while 
the  Christian  era  was  still  comparatively  young.  The 
Temple  de  Saint-Jean  is  therefore  a  monument  even 
more  venerable  than  Notre  Dame  la  Grande,  and 


XVII.]  POITIERS.  119 

that"  numbness  of  age  which  I  imputed  to  Notre 
Dauie  ought  to  reside  in  still  larger  measure  in  its 
crude  and  colorless  little  walls.  I  call  them  crude, 
in  spite  of  their  having  been  baked  through  by  the 
centuries,  only  because,  although  certain  rude  arches 
and  carvings  are  let  into  them,  and  they  are  sur 
mounted  at  either  end  with  a  small  gable,  they  have 
(so  far  as  I  can  remember)  little  fascination  of  sur 
face.  Notre  Dame  is  still  expressive,  still  pretends 
to  be  alive ;  but  the  Temple  has  delivered  its  mes 
sage,  and  is  completely  at  rest.  It  retains  a  kind  of 
atrium,  on  the  level  of  the  street,  from  which  you 
descend  to  the  original  floor,  now  uncovered,  but 
buried  for  years  under  a  false  bottom.  A  semicircular 
apse  was,  apparently  at  the  time  of  its  conversion 
into  a  church,  thrown  out  from  the  east  wall.  In  the 
middle  is  the  cavity  of  the  old  baptismal  font.  The 
walls  and  vaults  are  covered  with  traces  of  extremely 
archaic  frescos,  attributed,  I  believe,  to  the  twelfth 
century.  These  vague,  gaunt,  staring  fragments  of  fig 
ures  are,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  reminder  of  some  of  the 
early  Christian  churches  in  Eome ;  they  even  faintly 
recalled  to  me  the  great  mosaics  of  Eavenna.  The 
Temple  de  Saint-Jean  has  neither  the  antiquity  nor 
the  completeness  of  those  extraordinary  monuments, 
nearly  the  most  impressive  in  Europe;  but,  as  one 
may  say,  it  is  very  well  for  Poitiers. 

Not  far  from  it,  in  a  lonely  corner  which  was  ani 
mated  for  the  moment  by  the  vociferations,  of  several 
old  women  who  were  selling  tapers,  presumably  for 
the  occasion  of  a  particular  devotion,  is  the  graceful 
romanesque  church  erected  in  the  twelfth  century  to 
Saint  Eadegonde,  —  a  lady  who  found  means  to  be  a 


120  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XVII. 

saint  even  in  the  capacity  of  a  Merovingian  queen. 
It  bears  a  general  resemblance  to  Notre  Dame  la 
Grande,  and,  as  I  remember  it,  is  corrugated  in  some 
what  the  same  manner  with  porous-looking  carvings ; 
but  I  confess  that  what  I  chiefly  recollect  is  the  row 
of  old  women  sitting  in  front  of  it,  each  with  a  tray 
of  waxen  tapers  in  her  lap,  and  upbraiding  me  for 
my  neglect  of  the  opportunity  to  offer  such  a  tribute 
to  the  saint.  I  know  not  whether  this  privilege  is 
occasional  or  constant ;  within  the  church  there  was 
no  appearance  of  a  festival,  and  I  see  that  the  name- 
day  of  Saint  Radegonde  occurs  in  August,  so  that 
the  importunate  old  women  sit  there  always,  perhaps, 
and  deprive  of  its  propriety  the  epithet  I  just  ap 
plied  to  this  provincial  corner.  In  spite  of  the  old 
women,  however,  I  suspect  that  the  place  is  lonely ; 
and  indeed  it  is  perhaps  the  old  women  that  have 
made  the  desolation. 

The  lion  of  Poitiers,  in  the  eyes  of  the  natives, 
is  doubtless  the  Palais  de  Justice,  in  the  shadow  of 
which  the  statue-guarded  hotel,  just  mentioned,  erects 
itself;  and  the  gem  of  the  court-house,  which  has 
a  prosy  modern  front,  with  pillars  and  a  high  flight 
of  steps,  is  the  curious  salle  des  pas  pcrdus,  or  central 
hall,  out  of  which  the  different  tribunals  open.  This 
is  a  feature  of  every  French  court-house,  and  seems 
the  result  of  a  conviction  that  a  palace  of  justice  — 
the  French  deal  in  much  finer  names  than  we  — 
should  be  in  some  degree  palatial.  The  great  hall 
at  Poitiers  has  a  long  pedigree,  as  its  walls  date  back 
to  the  twelfth  century,  and  its  open  wooden  roof,  as 
well  as  the  remarkable  trio  of  chimney-pieces  at  the 
right  end  of  the  room  as  you  enter,  to  the  fifteenth. 


XVII.]  POITIERS.  121 

The  three  tall  fireplaces,  side  by  side,  with  a  delicate 
gallery  running  along  the  top  of  them,  constitute  the 
originality  of  this  ancient  chamber,  and  make  one 
think  of  the  groups  that  must  formerly  have  gathered 
there,  —  of  all  the  wet  boot-soles,  the  trickling  doub 
lets,  the  stiffened  fingers,  the  rheumatic  shanks,  that 
must  have  been  presented  to  such  an  incomparable 
focus  of  heat.  To-day,  I  am  afraid,  these  mighty 
hearths  are  forever  cold ;  justice  is  probably  adminis 
tered  with  the  aid  of  a  modern  calorifere,  and  the 
walls  of  the  palace  are  perforated  with  regurgitating 
tubes.  Behind  and  above  the  gallery  that  surmounts 
the  three  fireplaces  are  high  gothic  windows,  the 
tracery  of  which  masks,  in  some  sort,  the  chimneys ; 
and  in  each  angle  of  this  and  of  the  room  to  the 
right  and  left  of  the  trio  of  chimneys,  is  an  open 
work  spiral  staircase,  ascending  to  —  I  forget  where  ; 
perhaps  to  the  roof  of  the  edifice.  This  whole  side 
of  the  salle  is  very  lordly,  and  seems  to  express  an 
unstinted  hospitality,  to  extend  the  friendliest  of  all 
invitations,  to  bid  the  whole  world  come  and  get 
warm.  It  was  the  invention  of  John,  Duke  of  Berry 
and  Count  of  Poitou,  about  1395.  I  give  this  infor 
mation  on  the  authority  of  the  Guide-Joanne,  from 
which  source  I  gather  much  other  curious  learning ; 
as,  for  instance,  that  it  was  in  this  building,  when 
it  had  surely  a  very  different  front,  that  Charles  VII. 
was  proclaimed  king,  in  1422  ;  and  that  here  Jeanne 
Dare  was  subjected,  in  1429,  to  the  inquisition  of 
certain  doctors  and  matrons. 

The  most  charming  thing  at  Poitiers  is  simply  the 
Promenade  de  Blossac,  —  a  small  public  garden  at 
one  end  of  the  flat  top  of  the  hill.  It  has  a  happy 


122  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XVII. 

look  of  the  last  century  (having  been  arranged  at 
that  period),  and  a  beautiful  sweep  of  view  over 
the  surrounding  country,  and  especially  of  the  course 
of  the  little  river  Clain,  which  winds  about  a  part  of 
the  base  of  the  big  mound  of  Poitiers.  The  limit  of 
this  dear  little  garden  is  formed,  on  the  side  that 
turns  away  from  the  town,  by  the  rampart  erected  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  and  by  its  big  semicircular 
bastions.  This  rampart,  of  great  length,  has  a  low 
parapet;  you  look  over  it  at  the  charming  little 
vegetable-gardens  with  which  the  base  of  the  hill  ap 
pears  exclusively  to  be  garnished.  The  whole  pros 
pect  is  delightful,  especially  the  details  of  the  part 
just  under  the  walls,  at  the  end  of  the  walk.  Here 
the  river  makes  a  shining  twist,  which  a  painter  might 
have  invented,  and  the  side  of,  the  bill  is  terraced 
into  several  ledges,  —  a  sort  of  tangle  of  small  bloom 
ing  patches  and  little  pavilions  with  peaked  roofs  and 
green  shutters.  It  is  idle  to  attempt  to  reproduce 
all  this  in  words;  it  should  be  reproduced  only  in 
water-colors.  The  reader,  however,  will  already  have 
remarked  that  disparity  in  these  ineffectual  pages, 
which  are  pervaded  by  the  attempt  to  sketch  without 
a  palette  or  brushes.  He  will  doubtless,  also,  be 
struck  with  the  grovelling  vision  which,  on  such  a 
spot  as  the  ramparts  of  Poitiers,  peoples  itself  with 
carrots  and  cabbages  rather  than  with  images  of  the 
Black  Prince  and  the  captive  king.  I  am  not  sure 
that  in  looking  out  from  the  Promenade  de  Blossac 
you  command  the  old  battle-field  ;  it  is  enough  that 
it  was  not  far  off,  and  that  the  great  rout  of  French 
men  poured  into  the  walls  of  Poitiers,  leaving  on  the 
ground  a  number  of  the  fallen  equal  to  the  little  army 


XVII.]  POITIERS.  123 

(eight  thousand)  of  the  invader.  I  did  think  of  the 
battle.  I  wondered,  rather  helplessly,  where  it  had 
taken  place  ;  and  I  came  away  (as  the  reader  will  see 
from  the  preceding  sentence)  without  finding  out. 
This  indifference,  however,  was  a  result  rather  of  a 
general  dread  of  military  topography  than  of  a  want 
of  admiration  of  this  particular  victory,  which  I  have 
always  supposed  to  be  one  of  the  most  brilliant  on 
record.  Indeed,  I  should  be  almost  ashamed,  and 
very  much  at  a  loss,  to  say  what  light  it  was  that 
this  glorious  day  seemed  to  me  to  have  left  forever 
on  the  horizon,  and  why  the  very  name  of  the  place 
had  always  caused  my  blood  gently  to  tingle.  It  is 
carrying  the  feeling  of  race  to  quite  inscrutable 
lengths  when  a  vague  American  permits  himself  an 
emotion  because  more  than  five  centuries  ago,  on 
French  soil,  one  rapacious  Frenchman  got  the  better 
of  another.  Edward  was  a  Frenchman  as  well  as 
John,  and  French  were  the  cries  that  urged  each  of 
the  hosts  to  the  fight.  French  is  the  beautiful  motto 
graven  round  the  image  of  the  Black  Prince,  as  he 
lies  forever  at  rest  in  the  choir  of  Canterbury :  d 
la  mort  ne  pensai-je  mye.  Nevertheless,  the  victory 
of  Poitiers  declines  to  lose  itself  in  these  considera 
tions  ;  the  sense  of  it  is  a  part  of  our  heritage,  the  joy 
of  it  a  part  of  our  imagination,  arid  it  filters  down 
through  centuries  and  migrations  till  it  titillates  a 
New  Yorker  who  forgets  in  his  elation  that  he  hap 
pens  at  that  moment  to  be  enjoying  the  hospitality  of 
France.  It  was  something  done,  I  know  not  how 
justly,  for  England ;  and  what  was  done  in  the  four 
teenth  century  for  England  was  done  also  for  New 
York. 


124  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FKANCE.  [XVIII. 


xvm. 

IF  it  was  really  for  the  sake  of  the  Black  Prince 
that  I  had  stopped  at  Poitiers  (for  my  prevision  of 
Notre  Dame  la  Grande  and  of  the  little  temple  of  St. 
John  was  of  the  dimmest),  I  ought  to  have  stopped  at 
Angouleme  for  the  sake  of  David  and  Eve  Sechard, 
of  Lucien  de  Kubempre  and  of  Madame  de  Bargeton, 
who  when  she  wore  a  toilette  dudiee  sported  a  Jew 
ish  turban  ornamented  with  an  Eastern  brooch,  a 
scarf  of  gauze,  a  necklace  of  cameos,  and  a  robe  of 
"  painted  muslin,"  whatever  that  may  be ;  treating 
herself  to  these  luxuries  out  of  an  income  of  twelve 
thousand  francs.  The  persons  I  have  mentioned  have 
not  that  vagueness  of  identity  which  is  the  misfor 
tune  of  historical  characters ;  they  are  real,  supremely 
real,  thanks  to  their  affiliation  to  the  great  Balzac, 
who  had  invented  an  artificial  reality  which  was  as 
much  better  than  the  vulgar  article  as  mock-turtle 
soup  is  than  the  liquid  it  emulates.  The  first  time  I 
read  "  Les  Illusions  Perdues  "  I  should  have  refused 
to  believe  that  I  was  capable  of  passing  the  old  capi 
tal  of  Anjou  without  alighting  to  visit  the  Houmeau. 
But  we  never  know  what  we  are  capable  of  till  we  are 
tested,  as  I  reflected  when  I  found  myself  looking 
back  at  Angouleme  from  the  window  of  the  train,  just 
after  we  had  emerged  from  the  long  tunnel  that  passes 
under  the  town.  This  tunnel  perforates  the  hill  on 
which,  like  Poitiers,  Angouleme  rears  itself,  and  which 
gives  it  an  elevation  still  greater  than  that  of  Poitiers. 
You  may  have  a  tolerable  look  at  the  cathedral  with 
out  leaving  the  railway-carriage ;  for  it  stands  just 


XVIIT.]  ANGOUL&ME.  125 

above  the  tunnel,  and  is  exposed,  much  foreshortened, 
to  the  spectator  below.  There  is  evidently  a  charm 
ing  walk  round  the  plateau  of  the  town,  commanding 
those  pretty  views  of  which  Balzac  gives  an  account. 
But  the  train  whirled  me  away,  and  these  are  my  only 
impressions.  The  truth  is  that  I  had  no  need,  just  at 
that  moment,  of  putting  myself  into  communication 
with  Balzac ;  for  opposite  to  me  in  the  compartment 
were  a  couple  of  figures  almost  as  vivid  as  the  actors 
in  the  "  Comedie  Humaine."  One  of  these  was  a 
very  genial  and  dirty  old  priest,  and  the  other  was 
a  reserved  and  concentrated  young  monk,  —  the  latter 
(by  which  I  mean  a  monk  of  any  kind)  being  a  rare 
sight  to-day  in  France.  This  young  man,  indeed,  was 
mitigatedly  monastic.  He  had  a  big  brown  frock  and 
cowl,  but  he  had  also  a  shirt  and  a  pair  of  shoes  ;  he 
had,  instead  of  a  hempen  scourge  round  his  waist,  a 
stout  leather  thong,  and  he  carried  with  him  a  very 
profane  little  valise.  He  also  read,  from  beginning 
to  end,  the  "  Figaro  "  which  the  old  priest,  who  had 
done  the  same,  presented  to  him ;  and  he  looked 
altogether  as  if,  had  he  not  been  a  monk,  he  would 
have  made  a  distinguished  officer  of  engineers. 
When  he  was  not  reading  the  "  Figaro  "  he  was  con 
ning  his  breviary  or  answering,  with  rapid  precision 
and  with  a  deferential  but  discouraging  dryness,  the 
frequent  questions  of  his  companion,  who  was  of 
quite  another  type.  This  worthy  had  a  bored,  good- 
natured,  unbuttoned,  expansive  look ;  was  talkative, 
restless,  almost  disreputably  human.  He  was  sur 
rounded  by  a  great  deal  of  small  luggage,  and  had 
scattered  over  the  carriage  his  books,  his  papers, 
the  fragments  of  his  lunch,  and  the  contents  of  an 


126  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XVTII. 

extraordinary  bag,  which  he  kept  beside  him  —  a  kind 
of  secular  reliquary  —  and  which  appeared  to  contain 
the  odds  and  ends  of  a  lifetime,  as  he  took  from 
it  successively  a  pair  of  slippers,  an  old  padlock 
(which  evidently  did  n't  belong  to  it),  an  opera-glass,  a 
collection  of  almanacs,  and  a  large  sea-shell,  which  he 
very  carefully  examined.  I  think  that  if  he  had  not 
been  afraid  of  the  young  monk,  who  was  so  much 
more  serious  than  he,  he  would  have  held  the  shell  to 
his  ear,  like  a  child.  Indeed,  he  was  a  very  childish 
and  delightful  old  priest,  and  his  companion  evidently 
thought  him  most  frivolous.  But  I  liked  him  the 
better  of  the  two.  He  was  not  a  country  cure,  but  an 
ecclesiastic  of  some  rank,  who  had  seen  a  good  deal 
both  of  the  church  and  of  the  world ;  and  if  I  too 
had  not  been  afraid  of  his  colleague,  who  read  the 
"  Figaro  "  as  seriously  as  if  it  had  been  an  encyclical, 
I  should  have  entered  into  conversation  with  him. 

All  this  while  I  was  getting  on  to  Bordeaux, 
where  I  permitted  myself  to  spend  three  days.  I  am 
afraid  I  have  next  to  nothing  to  show  for  them,  and 
that  there  would  be  little  profit  in  lingering  on  this 
episode,  which  is  the  less  to  be  justified  as  I  had  in 
former  years  examined  Bordeaux  attentively  enough- 
It  contains  a  very  good  hotel,  —  an  hotel  not  good 
enough,  however,  to  keep  you  there  for  its  own  sake. 
For  the  rest,  Bordeaux  is  a  big,  rich,  handsome,  im 
posing  commercial  town,  with  long  rows  of  fine  old 
eighteenth-century  houses,  which  overlook  the  yel 
low  Garonne.  I  have  spoken  of  the  quays  of  Nantes 
as  fine,  but  those  of  Bordeaux  have  a  wider  sweep 
and  a  still  more  architectural  air.  The  appearance  of 
such  a  port  as  this  makes  the  Anglo-Saxon  tourist 


XVIII.]  BORDEAUX.  127 

blush  for  the  sordid  water-fronts  of  Liverpool  and 
New  York,  which,  with  their  larger  activity,  have  so 
much  more  reason  to  be  stately.  Bordeaux  gives  a 
great  impression  of  prosperous  industries,  and  suggests 
delightful  ideas,  images  of  prune-boxes  and  bottled 
claret.  As  the  focus  of  distribution  of  the  best  wine 
in  the  world,  it  is  indeed  a  sacred  city,  —  dedicated 
to  the  worship  of  Bacchus  in  the  most  discreet  form. 
The  country  all  about  it  is  covered  with  precious 
vineyards,  sources  of  fortune  to  their  owners  and  of 
satisfaction  to  distant  consumers;  and  as  you  look 
over  to  the  hills  beyond  the  Garonne  you  see  them 
in  the  autumn  sunshine,  fretted  with  the  rusty  rich 
ness  of  this  or  that  immortal  clos.  But  the  principal 
picture,  within  the  town,  is  that  of  the  vast  curving 
quays,  bordered  with  houses  that  look  like  the  hotels 
of  farmers-general  of  the  last  century,  and  of  the  wide, 
tawny  river,  crowded  with  shipping  and  spanned  by 
the  largest  of  bridges.  Some  of  the  types  on  the 
water-side  are  of  the  sort  that  arrest  a  sketcher,  — 
figures  of  stalwart,  brown-faced  Basques,  such  as  I 
had  seen  of  old  in  great  numbers  at  Biarritz,  with 
their  loose  circular  caps,  their  white  sandals,  their 
air  of  walking  for  a  wager.  Never  was  a  tougher,  a 
harder  race.  They  are  not  mariners,  nor  watermen, 
but,  putting  questions  of  temper  aside,  they  are  the 
best  possible  dock-porters.  "  II  s'y  fait  un  commerce 
terrible,"  a  douanier  said  to  me,  as  he  looked  up  and 
down  the  interminable  docks ;  and  such  a  place  has 
indeed  much  to  say  of  the  wealth,  the  capacity  for 
production,  of  France,  —  the  bright,  cheerful,  smoke 
less  industry  of  the  wonderful  country  which  pro 
duces,  above  all,  the  agreeable  things  of  life,  and  turns 


128  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XVIII. 

even  its  defeats  and  revolutions  into  gold.  The  whole 
town  has  an  air  of  almost  depressing  opulence,  an  ap 
pearance  which  culminates  in  the  great  place  which 
surrounds  the  Grand-Theatre,  —  an  establishment  in 
the  highest  style,  encircled  witli  columns,  arcades, 
lamps,  gilded  cafes.  One  feels  it  to  be  a  monument 
to  the  virtue  of  the  well-selected  bottle.  If  I  had  not 
forbidden  myself  to  linger,  I  should  venture  to  insist  . 
on  this,  and,  at  the  risk  of  being  considered  fantastic, 
trace  an  analogy  between  good  claret  and  the  best 
qualities  of  the  French  mind ;  pretend  that  there  is  a 
taste  of  sound  Bordeaux  in  all  the  happiest  manifes 
tations  of  that  fine  organ,  and  that,  correspondingly, 
there  is  a  touch  of  French  reason,  French  complete 
ness,  in  a  glass  of  Pontet-Canet.  The  danger  of  such 
an  excursion  would  lie  mainly  in  its  being  so  open  to 
the  reader  to  take  the  ground  from  under  my  feet 
by  saying  that  good  claret  does  n't  exist.  To  this  I 
should  have  no  reply  whatever.  I  should  be  unable 
to  tell  him  where  to  find  it.  I  certainly  did  n't  find 
it  at  Bordeaux,  where  I  drank  a  most  vulgar  fluid ; 
and  it  is  of  course  notorious  that  a  large  part  of  man 
kind  is  occupied  in  vainly  looking  for  it.  There  was 
a  great  pretence  of  putting  it  forward  at  the  Exhibi 
tion  which  was  going  on  at  Bordeaux  at  the  time  of 
my  visit,  an  "  exposition  philomathique,"  lodged  in  a 
collection  of  big  temporary  buildings  in  the  Alices 
d'Orleans,  and  regarded  by  the  Bordelais  for  the 
moment  as  the  most  brilliant  feature  of  their  city. 
Here  were  pyramids  of  bottles,  mountains  of  bottles, 
to  say  nothing  of  cases  and  cabinets  of  bottles.  The 
contemplation  of  these  glittering  -tiers  was  of  course 
not  very  convincing ;  and  indeed  the  whole  arrange- 


XVIII.]  BORDEAUX.  129 

merit  struck  me  as  a  high  impertinence.  Good  wine 
is  not  an  optical  pleasure,  it  is  an  inward  emotion ; 
and  if  there  was  a  chamber  of  degustation  on  the 
premises,  I  failed  to  discover  it.  It  was  not  in  the 
search  for  it,  indeed,  that  I  spent  half  an  hour  in  this 
bewildering  bazaar.  Like' all "  expositions/'  it  seemed 
to  me  to  be  full  of  ugly  things,  and  gave  one  a  por 
tentous  idea  of  the  quantity  of  rubbish  that  man 
carries  with  him  on  his  course  through  the  ages. 
Such  an  amount  of  luggage  for  a  journey  after  all  so 
short !  There  were  no  individual  objects ;  there  was 
nothing  but  dozens  and  hundreds,  all  machine-made 
and  expressionless,  in  spite  of  the  repeated  grimace, 
the  conscious  smartness,  of  "  the  last  new  thing,"  that 
was  stamped  on  all  of  them.  The  fatal  facility  of  the 
French  article  becomes  at  last  as  irritating  as  the  re 
frain  of  a  popular  song.  The  poor  "  Indiens  Galibis  " 
struck  me  as  really  more  interesting,  —  a  group  of 
stunted  savages  who  formed  one  of  the  attractions 
of  the  place,  and  were  confined  in  a  pen  in  the  open 
air,  with  a  rabble  of  people  pushing  and  squeezing, 
hanging  over  the  barrier,  to  look  at  them.  They  had 
no  grimace,  no  pretension  to  be  new,  no  desire  to 
catch  your  eye.  They  looked  at  their  visitors  no 
more  than  they  looked  at  each  other,  and  seemed 
ancient,  indifferent,  terribly  bored. 


130  A  LITTLE   TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XIX. 


XIX. 

THERE  is  much  entertainment  in  the  journey 
through  the  wide,  smiling  garden  of  Gascony;  I 
speak  of  it  as  I  took  it  in  going  from  Bordeaux 
to  Toulouse.  It  is  the  south,  quite  the  south,  and 
had  for  the  present  narrator  its  full  measure  of  the 
charm  he  is  always  determined  to  find  in  countries 
that  may  even  by  courtesy  be  said  to  appertain  to 
the  sun.  It  was,  moreover,  the  happy  and  genial 
view  of  these  mild  latitudes,  which,  Heaven  knows, 
often  have  a  dreariness  of  their  own  ;  a  land  teeming 
with  corn  and  wine,  and  speaking  everywhere  (that 
is,  everywhere  the  phylloxera  had  not  laid  it  waste) 
of  wealth  and  plenty.  The  road  runs  constantly  near 
the  Garonne,  touching  now  and  then  its  slow,  brown, 
rather  sullen  stream,  a  sullenness  that  encloses  great 
dangers  and  disasters.  The  traces  of  the  horrible 
floods  of  1875  have  disappeared,  and  the  land  smiles 
placidly  enough  while  it  waits  for  another  immersion. 
Toulouse,  at  the  period  I  speak  of,  was  up  to  its 
middle  (and  in  places  above  it)  in  water,  and  looks 
still  as  if  it  had  been  thoroughly  soaked,  —  as  if  it 
had  faded  and  shrivelled  with  a  long  steeping.  The 
fields  and  copses,  of  course,  are  more  forgiving.  The 
railway  line  follows  as  well  the  charming  Canal  du 
Midi,  which  is  as  pretty  as  a  river,  barring  the 
straightness,  and  here  and  there  occupies  the  fore 
ground,  beneath  a  screen  of  dense,  tall  trees,  while 
the  Garonne  takes  a  larger  and  more  irregular  course 
a  little  way  beyond  it.  People  who  are  fond  of  ca 
nals —  and,  speaking  from  the  pictorial  standpoint, 


XIX.]  TOULOUSE.  131 

I  hold  the  taste  to  be  most  legitimate  —  will  delight 
in  this  admirable  specimen  of  the  class,  which  has  a 
very  interesting  history,  not  to  be  narrated  here.  On 
the  other  side  of  the  road  (the  left),  all  the  way,  runs 
a  long,  low  line  of  hills,  or  rather  one  continuous  hill, 
or  perpetual  cliff,  with  a  straight  top,  in  the  shape  of 
a  ledge  of  rock,  which  might  pass  for  a  ruined  wall. 
I  am  afraid  the  reader  will  lose  patience  with  my 
habit  of  constantly  referring  to  the  landscape  of  Italy, 
as  if  that  were  the  measure  of  the  beauty  of  every 
other.  Yet  I  am  still  more  afraid  that  I  cannot 
apologize  for  it,  and  must  leave  it  in  its  culpable 
nakedness.  It  is  an  idle  habit ;  but  the  reader  will 
long  since  have  discovered  that  this  was  an  idle 
journey,  and  that  I  give  my  impressions  as  they 
came  to  me.  It  came  to  me,  then,  that  in  all  this 
view  there  was  something  transalpine,  with  a  greater 
smartness  and  freshness  and  much  less  elegance  and 
languor.  This  impression  was  occasionally  deepened 
by  the  appearance,  on  the  long  eminence  of  which 
I  speak,  of  a  village,  a  church,  or  a  chateau,  which 
seemed  to  look  down  at  the  plain  from  over  the 
ruined  wall.  The  perpetual  vines,  the  bright-faced 
flat-roofed  houses,  covered  with  tiles,  the  softness  and 
sweetness  of  the  light  and  air,  recalled  the  prosier 
portions  of  the  Lombard  plain.  Toulouse  itself  has 
a  little  of  this  Italian  expression,  but  not  enough  to 
give  a  color  to  its  dark,  dirty,  crooked  streets,  which 
are  irregular  without  being  eccentric;  and  which,  if  it 
were  not  for  the  superb  church  of  Saint-Sernin,  would 
be  quite  destitute  of  monuments. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  way  in  which  the 
names  of  certain  places  impose  themselves  on  the 


132  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XIX. 

mind,  and  I  must  add  that  of  Toulouse  to  the  list  of 
expressive  appellations.  It  certainly  evokes  a  vision, 
—  suggests  something  highly  meridional.  But  the 
city,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  less  pictorial  than  the 
word,  in  spite  of  the  Place  du  Capitole,  in  spite  of 
the  quay  of  the  Garonne,  in  spite  of  the  curious 
cloister  of  the  old  museum.  What  justifies  the 
images  that  are  latent  in  the  word  is  not  the  aspect, 
but  the  history,  of  the  town.  The  hotel  to  which 
the  well-advised  traveller  will  repair  stands  in  a 
corner  of  the  Place  du  Capitole,  which  is  the  heart 
and  centre  of  Toulouse,  and  which  bears  a  vague 
and  inexpensive  resemblance  to  Piazza  Castello  at 
Turin.  The  Capitol,  with  a  wide  modern  face,  oc 
cupies  one  side,  and,  like  the  palace  at  Turin,  looks 
across  at  a  high  arcade,  under  which  the  hotels,  the 
principal  shops,  and  the  lounging  citizens  are  gathered. 
The  shops  are  probably  better  than  the  Turinese,  but 
the  people  are  not  so  good.  Stunted,  shabby,  rather 
vitiated  looking,  they  have  none  of  the  personal  rich 
ness  of  the  sturdy  Piedmontese ;  and  I  will  take  this 
occasion  to  remark  that  in  the  course  of  a  journey  of 
several  weeks  in  the  French  provinces  I  rarely  en 
countered  a  well-dressed  male.  Can  it  be  possible 
that  republics  are  unfavorable  to  a  certain  attention 
to  one's  boots  and  one's  beard  ?  I  risk  this  some 
what  futile  inquiry  because  the  proportion  of  neat 
coats  and  trousers  seemed  to  be  about  the  same  in 
France  and  in  my  native  land.  It  was  notably  lower 
than  in  England  and  in  Italy,  and  even  warranted 
the  supposition  that  most  good  provincials  have  their 
chin  shaven  and  their  boots  blacked  but  once  a  week. 
I  hasten  to  add,  lest  my  observation  should  appear  to 


XIX.]  TOULOUSE.  133 

be  of  a  sadly  superficial  character,  that  the  manners 
and  conversation  of  these  gentlemen  bore  (whenever 
I  had  occasion  to  appreciate  them)  no  relation  to  the 
state  of  their  chin  and  their  boots.     They  were  almost 
always  marked  by  an  extreme  amenity.     At  Toulouse 
there  was  the  strongest  temptation  to  speak  to  peo 
ple,  simply  for  the  entertainment  of  hearing   them 
reply  with  that  curious,  that  fascinating  accent  of  the 
Languedoc,  which   appear^   to  abound  in  final  con 
sonants,  and  leads  the  Toulousains  to  say  lien-g  and 
maison-g,  like  Englishmen  learning   French,      It  is 
as  if  they  talked  with  their  teeth  rather  than  with 
their    tongue.      I   find   in   my   note-book  a  phrase 
in  regard  to  Toulouse  which  is  perhaps  a  little  ill- 
natured,  but  which  I  will  transcribe   as   it  stands : 
"The  oddity  is  that  the  place  should  be  both  ani 
mated  and  dull.     A  big,  brown-skinned  population, 
clattering  about  in  a  flat,  tortuous  town,  which  pro 
duces  nothing  whatever  that  I  can  discover.     Except 
the  church  of  Saint-Sernin  and  the  fine  old  court 
of  the  H6tel  d'Assezat,  Toulouse  has  no  architecture ; 
the  houses  are  for  the  most  part  of  brick,  of  a  grayish- 
red  color,  and  have  no  particular  style.     The  brick 
work  of  the  place  is  in  fact  very  poor,  —  inferior  to 
that  of  the  north  Italian  towns,  and  quite  wanting 
in  the  richness  of  tone  which  this  homely  material 
takes  on  in  the  damp  climates  of  the  north."     And 
then  my  note-book  goes  on  to  narrate  a  little  visit  to 
the  Capitol,  which  was  soon  made,  as  the  building 
was  in   course   of  repair  and   half  the   rooms   were 
closed. 


134  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XX. 


XX. 

THE  history  of  Toulouse   is   detestable,  saturated 
with  blood  and  perfidy ;  and  the  ancient  custom  of 
the  Floral  Games,  grafted  upon  all  sorts  of  internecine 
traditions,  seems,  with  its  false  pastoralism,  its  mock 
chivalry,  its  display  of  fine  feelings,  to  set  off  rather 
than   to   mitigate  these   horrors.     The   society  was 
founded  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  it  has  held 
annual   meetings   ever   since,  —  meetings    at    which 
poems  in  the  fine  old  langue  d'oc  are  declaimed  and 
a  blushing  laureate  is  chosen.     This  business  takes 
place  in  the  Capitol,  before  the  chief  magistrate  of 
the  town,  who  is  known  as  the  capitoul,  and  of  all 
the  pretty  women  as  well,  —  a  class  very  numerous  at 
Toulouse.     It  was  impossible  to  have  a  finer  person 
than  that  of  the  portress  who  pretended  to  show  me 
the  apartments  in  which  the  Floral  Games  are  held ; 
a  big,  brown,  expansive  woman,  still  in  the  prime  of 
life,  with  a  speaking  eye,  an  extraordinary  assurance, 
and  a  pair  of  magenta  stockings,  which  were  inserted 
into  the  neatest  and  most  polished  little  black  sabots, 
and  which,  as  she  clattered  up  the  stairs  before  rne, 
lavishly  displaying  them,  made   her  look   like  the 
heroine  of  an  opera-bouffe.     Her  talk  was  all  in  %'s, 
g's,  and  cZ's,  and  in  mute  e's  strongly  accented,   as 
autre,  theatre,  splendide,  —  the  last  being  an  epithet 
she  applied  to  everything  the  Capitol  contained,  and 
especially    to   a    horrible    picture   representing    the 
famous  Cle'mence  Isaure,  the  reputed  foundress  of 
the  poetical  contest,  presiding  on  one  of  these  oc 
casions.     I  wondered  whether  Clemence  Isaure  had 


XX.]  TOULOUSE:    THE  CAPITOL.  135 

been  anything  like  this  terrible  Toulousaine  of  to-day, 
who  would  have  been  a  capital  figure-head  for  a  floral 
game.  The  lady  in  whose  honor  the  picture  I  have 
just  mentioned  was  painted  is  a  somewhat  mythical 
personage,  and  she  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  "  Bio- 
graphie  Universelle."  She  is,  however,  a  very  grace 
ful  myth ;  and  if  she  never  existed,  her  statue  does,  at 
least,  —  a  shapeless  effigy,  transferred  to  the  Capitol 
from  the  so-called  tomb  of  Clemence  in  the  old 
church  of  La  Daurade.  The  great  hall  in  which  the 
Floral  Games  are  held  was  encumbered  with  scaf 
foldings,  and  I  was  unable  to  admire  the  long  series 
of  busts  of  the  bards  who  have  won  prizes  and  the 
portraits  of  all  the  capitouls  of  Toulouse.  As  a  com 
pensation  I  was  introduced  to  a  big  bookcase,  filled 
with  the  poems  that  have  been  crowned  since  the 
days  of  the  troubadours  (a  portentous  collection),  and 
the  big  butcher's  knife  with  which,  according  to  the 
legend,  Henry,  Duke  of  Montmorency,  who  had  con 
spired  against  the  great  cardinal  with  Gaston  of 
Orleans  and  Mary  de'  Medici,  was,  in  1632,  beheaded 
on  this  spot  by  the  order  of  Eichelieu.  With  these 
objects  the  interest  of  the  Capitol  was  exhausted. 
The  building,  indeed,  has  not  the  grandeur  of  its 
name,  which  is  a  sort  of  promise  that  the  visitor  will 
find  some  sensible  embodiment  of  the  old  Roman 
tradition  that  once  flourished  in  this  part  of  France. 
It  is  inferior  in  impressiveness  to  the  other  three  fa 
mous  Capitols  of  the  modern  world,  —  that  of  Rome 
(if  I  may  call  the  present  structure  modern)  and 
those  of  Washington  and  Albany  ! 

The  only  Roman  remains  at  Toulouse  are  to  be 
found  in  the  museum,  —  a  very  interesting  establish- 


136  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XX. 

ment,  which  I  was  condemned  to  see  as  imperfectly 
as  I  had  seen  the  Capitol.  It  was  being  rearranged ; 
and  the  gallery  of  paintings,  which  is  the  least  in 
teresting  feature,  was  the  only  part  that  was  not 
upside-down.  The  pictures  are  mainly  of  the  mod 
ern  French  school,  and  I  remember  nothing  but  a 
powerful  though  disagreeable  specimen  of  Henner, 
who  paints  the  human  body,  and  paints  it  so  well, 
with  a  brush  dipped  in  blackness ;  and,  placed  among 
the  paintings,  a  bronze  replica  of  the  charming  young 
David  of  Mercie.  These  things  have  been  set  out  in 
the  church  of  an  old  monastery,  long  since  suppressed, 
and  the  rest  of  the  collection  occupies  the  cloisters. 
These  are  two  in  number,  —  a  small  one,  which  you 
enter  first  from  the  street,  and  a  very  vast  and  ele 
gant  one  beyond  it,  which  with  its  light  gothic  arches 
and  slim  columns  (of  the  fourteenth  century),  its 
broad  walk,  its  little  garden,  with  old  tombs  and 
statues  in  the  centre,  is  by  far  the  most  picturesque, 
the  most  sketchable,  spot  in  Toulouse.  It  must  be 
doubly  so  when  the  Koman  busts,  inscriptions,  slabs 
and  sarcophagi,  are  ranged  along  the  walls ;  it  must 
indeed  (to  compare  small  things  with  great,  and  as  the 
judicious  Murray  remarks)  bear  a  certain  resemblance 
to  the  Campo  Santo  at  Pisa.  But  these  things  are 
absent  now ;  the  cloister  is  a  litter  of  confusion,  and 
its  treasures  have  been  stowed  away,  confusedly,  in 
sundry  inaccessible  rooms.  The  custodian  attempted 
to  console  me  by  telling  me  that  when  they  are  exhib 
ited  again  it  will  be  on  a  scientific  basis,  and  with  an 
order  and  regularity  of  which  they  were  formerly 
innocent.  But  I  was  not  consoled.  I  wanted  simply 
the  spectacle,  the  picture,  and  I  did  n't  care  in  the 


XXL]  TOULOUSE:  SAINT-SERNIN.  137 

least  for  the  classification.  Old  Eoman  fragments,  ex 
posed  to  light  in  the  open  air,  under  a  southern  sky, 
in  a  quadrangle  round  a  garden,  have  an  immortal 
charm  simply  in  their  general  effect ;  and  the  charm 
is  all  the  greater  when  the  soil  of  the  very  place  has 
yielded  them  up. 


XXI. 

MY  real  consolation  was  an  hour  I  spent  in  Saint- 
Sernin,  one  of  the  noblest  churches  in  southern 
France,  and  easily  the  first  among  those  of  Toulouse. 
This  great  structure,  a  masterpiece  of  twelfth-century 
romanesque,  and  dedicated  to  Saint  Saturninus, — 
the  Toulousains  have  abbreviated,  —  is,  I  think,  alone 
worth  a  journey  to  Toulouse.  What  makes  it  so  is 
the  extraordinary  seriousness  of  its  interior  ;  no  other 
term  occurs  to  me  as  expressing  so  well  the  character 
of  its  clear  gray  nave.  As  a  general  thing,  I  do  not 
favor  the  fashion  of  attributing  moral  qualities  to 
buildings ;  I  shrink  from  talking  about  tender  porti 
cos  and  sincere  carnpanili;  but  I  find  I  cannot  get 
on  at  all  without  imputing  some  sort  of  morality  to 
Saint-Sernm.  As  it  stands  to-day,  the  church  has 
been  completely  restored  by  Viollet-le-Duc.  The  ex 
terior  is  of  brick,  and  has  little  charm  save  that  of  a 
tower  of  four  rows  of  arches,  narrowing  together  as 
they  ascend.  The  nave  is  of  great  length  and  height, 
the  barrel-roof  of  stone,  the  effect  of  the  round  arches 
and  pillars  in  the  triforium  especially  fine.  There 
are  two  low  aisles  on  either  side.  The  choir  is  very 


138  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXL 

deep  and  narrow;  it  seems  to  close  together,  and 
looks  as  if  it  were  meant  for  intensely  earnest  rites. 
The  transepts  are  most  noble,  especially  the  arches  of 
the  second  tier.  The  whole  church  is  narrow  for  its 
length,  and  is  singularly  complete  and  homogeneous. 
As  I  say  all  this,  I  feel  that  I  quite  fail  to  give  an 
impression  of  its  manly  gravity,  its  strong  proportions, 
or  of  the  lonesome  look  of  its  renovated  stones  as  I 
sat  there  while  the  October  twilight  gathered.  It 
is  a  real  work  of  art,  a  high  conception.  The  crypt, 
into  which  I  was  eventually  led  captive  by  an  im 
portunate  sacristan,  is  quite  another  affair,  though 
indeed  I  suppose  it  may  also  be  spoken  of  as  a  work 
of  art.  It  is  a  rich  museum  of  relics,  and  contains 
the  head  of  Saint  Thomas  Aquinas,  wrapped  up  in  a 
napkin  and  exhibited  in  a  glass  case.  The  sacristan 
took  a  lamp  and  guided  me  about,  presenting  me  to 
one  saintly  remnant  after  another.  The  impression 
was  grotesque,  but  some  of  the  objects  were  contained 
in  curious  old  cases  of  beaten  silver  and  brass ;  these 
things,  at  least,  which  looked  as  if  they  had  been 
transmitted  from  the  early  church,  were  venerable. 
There  was,  however,  a  kind  of  wholesale  sanctity  about 
the  place  which  overshot  the  mark;  it  pretends  to 
be  one  of  the  holiest  spots  in  the  world.  The  effect 
is  spoiled  by  the  way  the  sacristans  hang  about  and 
offer  to  take  you  into  it  for  ten  sous,  —  I  was  accosted 
by  two  and  escaped  from  another,  —  and  by  the  fa 
miliar  manner  in  which  you  pop  in  and  out.  This 
episode  rather  broke  the  charm  of  Saint-Sernin,  so 
that  I  took  my  departure  and  went  in  search  of  the 
cathedral.  It  was  scarcely  worth  finding,  and  struck 
me  as  an  odd,  dislocated  fragment.  The  front  con- 


XXL]  TOULOUSE.  139 

sists  only  of  a  portal,  beside  which  a  tall  brick  tower, 
of  a  later  period,  has  been  erected.  The  nave  was 
wrapped  in  dimness,  with  a  few  scattered  lamps.  I 
could  only  distinguish  an  immense  vault,  like  a  high 
cavern,  without  aisles.  Here  and  there  in  the  gloom 
was  a  kneeling  figure ;  the  whole  place  was  myste 
rious  and  lop-sided.  The  choir  was  curtained  off;  it 
appeared  not  to  correspond  with  the  nave,  —  that  is, 
not  to  have  the  same  axis.  The  only  other  ecclesias 
tical  impression  I  gathered  at  Toulouse  came  to  me  in 
the  church  of  La  Daurade,  of  which  the  front,  on  the 
quay  by  the  Garonne,  was  closed  with  scaffoldings ; 
so  that  one  entered  it  from  behind,  where  it  is  com 
pletely  masked  by  houses,  through  a  door  which  has 
at  first  no  traceable  connection  with  it.  It  is  a  vast, 
high,  modernized,  heavily  decorated  church,  dimly 
lighted  at  all  times,  I  should  suppose,  and  enriched 
by  the  shades  of  evening  at  the  time  I  looked  into  it. 
I  perceived  that  it  consisted  mainly  of  a  large  square, 
beneath  a  dome,  in  the  centre  of  which  a  single  person 
—  a  lady  —  was  praying  with  the  utmost  absorption. 
The  manner  of  access  to  the  church  interposed  such 
an  obstacle  to  the  outer  profanities  that  I  had  a  sense 
of  intruding,  and  presently  withdrew,  carrying  with 
me  a  picture  of  the  vast,  still  interior,  the  gilded  roof 
gleaming  in  the  twilight,  and  the  solitary  worshipper. 
What  was  s*he  praying  for,  and  was  she  not  almost 
afraid  to  remain  there  alone  ? 

For  the  rest,  the  picturesque  at  Toulouse  consists 
principally  of  the  walk  beside  the  Garonne,  which  is 
spanned,  to  the  faubourg  of  Saint-Cyprien,  by  a  stout 
brick  bridge.  This  hapless  suburb,  the  baseness  of 
whose  site  is  noticeable,  lay  for  days  under  the  water 


140  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXI. 

at  the  time  of  the  last  inundations.  The  Garonne 
had  almost  mounted  to  the  roofs  of  the  houses,  and 
the  place  continues  to  present  a  blighted,  frightened 
look.  Two  or  three  persons,  with  whom  I  had  some 
conversation,  spoke  of  that  time  as  a  memory  of  hor 
ror.  I  have  not  done  with  my  Italian  comparisons ; 
I  shall  never  have  done  with  them.  I  am  therefore 
free  to  say  that  in  the  way  in  which  Toulouse  looks 
out  on  the  Garonne  there  was  something  that  re 
minded  me  vaguely  of  the  way  in  which  Pisa  looks  out 
on  the  Arno.  The  red-faced  houses  —  all  of  brick  — 
along  the  quay  have  a  mixture  of  brightness  and 
shabbiness,  as  well  as  the  fashion  of  the  open  loggia  in 
the  top-story.  The  river,  with  another  bridge  or  two, 
might  be  the  Arno,  and  the  buildings  on  the  other 
side  of  it  —  a  hospital,  a  suppressed  convent — dip 
their  feet  into  it  with  real  southern  cynicism.  I 
have  spoken  of  the  old  Hotel  d'Asse*zat  as  the  best 
house  at  Toulouse  ;  with  the  exception  of  the  cloister 
of  the  museum,  it  is  the  only  "  bit "  I  remember.  It 
has  fallen  from  the  state  of  a  noble  residence  of  the 
sixteenth  century  to  that  of  a  warehouse  and  a  set 
of  offices ;  but  a  certain  dignity  lingers  in  its  melan 
choly  court,  which  is  divided  from  the  street  by  a 
gateway  that  is  still  imposing,  and  in  which  a  clam 
bering  vine  and  a  red  Virginia-creeper  were  suspended 
to  the  rusty  walls  of  brick  and  stone. 

The  most  interesting  house  at  Toulouse  is  far 
from  being  the  most  striking.  At  the  door  of  No.  50 
Eue  des  Filatiers,  a  featureless,  solid  structure,  was 
found  hanging,  one  autumn  evening,  the  body  of  the 
young  Marc-Antoine  Galas,  whose  ill-inspired  suicide 
was  to  be  the  first  act  of  a  tragedy  so  horrible.  The 


XXII.]  CARCASSONNE.  141 

fanaticism  aroused  in  the  townsfolk  by  this  incident ; 
the  execution  by  torture  of  Jean  Galas,  accused  as  a 
Protestant  of  having  hanged  his  son,  who  had  gone 
over  to  the  Church  of  Rome  ;  the  ruin  of  the  family ; 
the  claustration  of  the  daughters  ;  the  flight  of  the 
widow  to  Switzerland ;  her  introduction  to  Voltaire ; 
the  excited  zeal  of  that  incomparable  partisan,  and 
the  passionate  persistence  with  which,  from  year  to 
year,  he  pursued  a  reversal  of  judgment,  till  at  last  he 
obtained  it,  and  devoted  the  tribunal  of  Toulouse  to 
execration  and  the  name  of  the  victims  to  lasting 
wonder  and  pity,  —  these  things  form  part  of  one  of 
the  most  interesting  and  touching  episodes  of  the 
social  history  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  story 
has  the  fatal  progression,  the  dark  rigidity,  of  one  of 
the  tragic  dramas  of  the  Greeks.  Jean  Galas,  ad 
vanced  in  life,  blameless,  bewildered,  protesting  his 
innocence,  had  been  broken  on  the  wheel;  and  the 
sight  of  his  decent  dwelling,  which  brought  home  to 
me  all  that  had  been  suffered  there,  spoiled  for  ine, 
for  half  an  hour,  the  impression  of  Toulouse. 


XXII. 

I  SPENT  but  a  few  hours  at  Carcassonne ;  but  those 
hours  had  a  rounded  felicity,  and  I  cannot  do  better 
than  transcribe  from  my  note-book  the  little  record 
made  at  the  moment.  Vitiated  as  it  may  be  by 
crudity  and  incoherency,  it  has  at  any  rate  the  fresh 
ness  of  a  great  emotion.  This  is  the  best  quality 
that  a  reader  may  hope  to  extract  from  a  narrative  in 


142  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXII. 

which  "  useful  information "  and  technical  lore  even 
of  the  most  general  sort  are  completely  absent.  For 
Carcassonne  is  moving,  beyond  a  doubt ;  and  the  trav 
eller  who,  in  the  course  of  a  little  tour  in  France, 
may  have  felt  himself  urged,  in  melancholy  moments, 
to  say  that  on  the  whole  the  disappointments  are  as 
numerous  as  the  satisfactions,  must  admit  that  there 
can  be  nothing  better  than  this. 

The  country,  after  you  leave  Toulouse,  continues  to 
be  charming  ;  the  more  so  that  it  merges  its  flatness 
in  the  distant  Cevennes  on  one  side,  and  on  the 
other,  far  away  on  your  right,  in  the  richer  range  of 
the  Pyrenees.  Olives  and  cypresses,  pergolas  and 
vines,  terraces  on  the  roofs  of  houses,  soft,  iridescent 
mountains,  a  warm  yellow  light,  —  what  more  could 
the  difficult  tourist  want  ?  He  left  his  luggage  at 
the  station,  warily  determined  to  look  at  the  inn 
before  committing  himself  to  it.  It  was  so  evident 
(even  to  a  cursory  glance)  that  it  might  easily  have 
been  much  better  that  he  simply  took  his  way  to  the 
town,  with  the  whole  of  a  superb  afternoon  before 
him.  When  I  say  the  town,  I  mean  the  towns  ; 
there  being  two  at  Carcassonne,  perfectly  distinct,  "and 
each  with  excellent  claims  to  the  title.  They  have 
settled  the  matter  between  them,  however,  and  the 
elder,  the  shrine  of  pilgrimage,  to  which  the  other  is 
but  a  stepping-stone,  or  even,  as  I  may  say,  a  hum 
ble  door-mat,  takes  the  name  of  the  Cite*.  You  see 
nothing  of  the  Cite*  from  the  station;  it  is  masked 
by  the  agglomeration  of  the  ville-basse,  which  is  rela 
tively  (but  only  relatively)  new.  A  wonderful  ave 
nue  of  acacias  leads  to  it  from  the  station,  —  leads 
past  it,  rather,  and  conducts  you  to  a  little  high- 


XXII.]  CARCASSONNE.  143 

backed  bridge  over  the  Aude,  beyond  which,  detached 
and  erect,  a  distinct  mediaeval  silhouette,  the  Cite 
presents  itself.  Like  a  rival  shop,  on  the  invidious 
side  of  a  street,  it  has  "  no  connection "  with  the 
establishment  across  the  way,  although  the  two  places 
are  united  (if  old  Carcassonne  may  be  said  to  be 
united  to  anything)  by  a  vague  little  rustic  faubourg. 
Perched  on  its  solid  pedestal,  the  perfect  detachment 
of  the  Cite  is  what  first  strikes  you.  To  take  leave, 
without  delay,  of  the  ville-basse,  I  may  say  that  the 
splendid  acacias  I  have  mentioned  flung  a  summerish 
dusk  over  the  place,  in  which  a  few  scattered  re 
mains  of  stout  walls  and  big  bastions  looked  venerable 
and  picturesque.  A  little  boulevard  winds  round 
the  town,  planted  with  trees  and  garnished  with 
more  benches  than  I  ever  saw  provided  by  a  soft 
hearted  municipality.  This  precinct  had  a  warm,  lazy, 
dusty,  southern  look,  as  if  the  people  sat  out-of-doors 
a  great  deal,  and  wandered  about  in  the  stillness  of 
summer  nights.  The  figure  of  the  elder  town,  at 
these  hours,  must  be  ghostly  enough  on  its  neighbor 
ing  hill.  Even  by  day  it  has  the  air  of  a  vignette 
of  Gustavo  Dore,  a  couplet  of  Victor  Hugo.  It  is  al 
most  too  perfect,  —  as  if  it  were  an  enormous  model, 
placed  on  a  big  green  table  at  a  museum.  A  steep, 
paved  way,  grass-grown  like  all  roads  where  vehicles 
never  pass,  stretches  up  to  it  in  the  sun.  It  has 
a  double  enceinte,  complete  outer  walls  and  com 
plete  inner  (these,  elaborately  fortified,  are  the  more 
curious) ;  and  this  congregation  of  ramparts,  towers, 
bastions,  battlements,  barbicans,  is  as  fantastic  and 
romantic  as  you  please.  The  approach  I  mention 
here  leads  to  the  gate  that  looks  toward  Toulouse, — 


144  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXII. 

the  Porte  de  1'Aude.  There  is  a  second,  on  the 
other  side,  called,  I  believe,  the  Porte  Narbonnaise,  a 
magnificent  gate,  flanked  with  towers  thick  and  tall, 
defended  by  elaborate  outworks ;  and  these  two  aper 
tures  alone  admit  you  to  the  place,  —  putting  aside 
a  small  sally-port,  protected  by  a  great  bastion,  on 
the  quarter  that  looks  toward  the  Pyrenees. 

As  a  votary,  always,  in  the  first  instance,  of  a 
general  impression,  I  walked  all  round  the  outer 
enceinte,  —  a  process  on  the  very  face  of  it  entertain 
ing.  I  took  to  the  right  of  the  Porte  de  1'Aude,  with 
out  entering  it,  where  the  old  moat  has  been  filled  in. 
The  filling-in  of  the  moat  has  created  a  grassy  level 
at  the  foot  of  the  big  gray  towers,  which,  rising  at 
frequent  intervals,  stretch  their  stiff  curtain  of  stone 
from  point  to  point.  The  curtain  drops  without  a 
fold  upon  the  quiet  grass,  which  was  dotted  here  and 
there  with  a  humble  native,  dozing  away  the  golden 
afternoon.  The  natives  of  the  elder  Carcassonne  are 
all  humble ;  for  the  core  of  the  Cite  has  shrunken  and 
decayed,  and  there  is  little  life  among  the  ruins.  A 
few  tenacious  laborers,  who  work  in  the  neighboring 
fields  or  in  the  ville-basse,  and  sundry  octogenarians 
of  both  sexes,  who  are  dying  where  they  have  lived, 
and  contribute  much  to  the  pictorial  effect,  —  these 
are  the  principal  inhabitants.  The  process  of  con 
verting  the  place  from  an  irresponsible  old  town  into 
a  conscious  "  specimen  "  has  of  course  been  attended 
with  eliminations;  the  population  has,  as  a  general 
thing,  been  restored  away.  I  should  lose  no  time  in 
saying  that  restoration  is  the  great  mark  of  the  Cite. 
M.  Viollet-le-Duc  has  worked  his  will  upon  it,  put 
it  into  perfect  order,  revived  the  fortifications  in  every 


xxn.]  CARCASSONNE.  145 

detail.  I  do  not  pretend  to  judge  the  performance, 
carried  out  on  a  scale  and  in  a  spirit  which  really 
impose  themselves  on  the  imagination.  Few  archi 
tects  have  had  such  a  chance,  and  M.  Viollet-le-Duc 
must  have  been  the  envy  of  the  whole  restoring  fra 
ternity.  The  image  of  a  more  crumbling  Carcassonne 
rises  in  the  mind,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  forty 
years  ago  the  place  was  more  affecting.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  we  see  it  to-day,  it  is  a  wonderful 
evocation  ;  and  if  there  is  a  great  deal  of  new  in  the 
old,  there  is  plenty  of  old  in  the  new.  The  repaired 
crenellations,  the  inserted  patches,  of  the  walls  of 
the  outer  circle  sufficiently  express  this  commixture. 
My  walk  brought  me  into  full  view  of  the  Pyrenees, 
which,  now  that  the  sun  had  begun  to  sink  and  the 
shadows  to  grow  long,  had  a  wonderful  violet  glow. 
The  platform  at  the  base  of  the  walls  has  a  greater 
width  on  this  side,  and  it  made  the  scene  more 
complete.  Two  or  three  old  crones  had  crawled  out 
of  the  Porte  Narbonnaise,  to  examine  the  advancing 
visitor ;  and  a  very  ancient  peasant,  lying  there  with 
his  back  against  a  tower;  was  tending  half  a  dozen 
lean  sheep.  A  poor  man  in  a  very  old  blouse, 
crippled  and  with  crutches  lying  beside  him,  had 
been  brought  out  and  placed  on  a  stool,  where  he 
enjoyed  the  afternoon  as  best  he  might.  He  looked 
so  ill  and  so  patient  that  I  spoke  to  him;  found 
that  his  legs  were  paralyzed  and  he  was  quite  help 
less.  He  had  formerly  been  seven  years  in  the 
army,  and  had  made  the  campaign  of  Mexico  with 
Bazaine.  Born  in  the  old  Cite,  he  had  come  back 
there  to  end  his  days.  It  seemed  strange,  as  he  sat 
there,  with  those  romantic  walls  behind  him  and  the 

10 


146  %         A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXII. 

great  picture  of  the  Pyrenees  in  front,  to  think  that 
he  had  been  across  the  seas  to  the  far-away  new 
world,  had  made  part  of  a  famous  expedition,  and 
was  now  a  cripple  at  the  gate  of  the  mediaeval  city 
where  he  had  played  as  a  child.  All  this  struck  me 
as  a  great  deal  of  history  for  so  modest  a  figure,  — 
a  poor  little  figure  that  could  only  just  unclose  its 
palm  for  a  small  silver  coin. 

He  was  not  the  only  acquaintance  I  made  at  Car 
cassonne.  I  had  not  pursued  my  circuit  of  the  walls 
much  further  when  I  encountered  a  person  of  quite 
another  type,  of  whom  I  asked  some  question  which 
had  just  then  presented  itself,  and  who  proved  to  be 
the  very  genius  of  the  spot.  He  was  a  sociable  son 
of  the  villc-basse,  a  gentleman,  and,  as  I  afterwards 
learned,  an  employe  at  the  prefecture,  —  a  person,  in 
short,  much  esteemed  at  Carcassonne.  (I  may  say 
all  this,  as  he  will  never  read  these  pages.)  He  had 
been  ill  for  a  month,  and  in  the  company  of  his  little 
dog  was  taking  his  first  airing ;  in  his  own  phrase  he 
was  amoureux-fou  de  la  Cite,  —  he  could  lose  no  time 
in  coming  back  to  it.  He  talked  of  it,  indeed,  as  a 
lover,  and,  giving  me  for  half  an  hour  the  advantage 
of  his  company,  showed  me  all  the  points  of  the 
place.  (I  speak  here  always  of  the  outer  enceinte  : 
you  penetrate  to  the  inner  —  which  is  the  specialty  of 
Carcassonne,  and  the  great  curiosity  —  only  by  appli 
cation  at  the  lodge  of  the  regular  custodian,  a  remark 
able  functionary,  who,  half  an  hour  later,  when  I  had 
been  introduced  to  him  by  my  friend  the  amateur, 
marched  me  over  the  fortifications  with  a  tremen 
dous  accompaniment  of  dates  and  technical  terms.) 
My  companion  pointed  out  to  me  in  particular  the 


XXII.]  CARCASSONNE.  147 

traces  of  different  periods  in  the  structure  of  the 
walls.  There  is  a  portentous  amount  of  history  em 
bedded  in  them,  beginning  with  Eomans  and  Visi 
goths  ;  here  and  there  are  marks  of  old  breaches, 
hastily  repaired.  We  passed  into  the  town,  —  into 
that  part  of  it  not  included  in  the  citadel.  It  is  the 
queerest  and  most  fragmentary  little  place  in  the 
world,  as  everything  save  the  fortifications  is  being 
suffered  to  crumble  away,  in  order  that  the  spirit  of 
M.  Viollet-le-Duc  alone  may  pervade  it,  and  it  may 
subsist  simply  as  a  magnificent  shell.  As  the  leases 
of  the  wretched  little  houses  fall  in,  the  ground  is 
cleared  of  them;  and  a  mumbling  old  woman  ap 
proached  me  in  the  course  of  my  circuit,  inviting  me 
to  condole  with  her  on  the  disappearance  of  so  many 
of  the  hovels  which  in  the  last  few  hundred  years 
(since  the  collapse  of  Carcassonne  as  a  stronghold) 
had  attached  themselves  to  the  base  of  the  walls,  in 
the  space  between  the  two  circles.  These  habitations, 
constructed  of  materials  taken  from  the  ruins,  nestled 
there  snugly  enough.  This  intermediate  space  had 
therefore  become  a  kind  of  street,  which  has  crumbled 
in  turn,  as  the  fortress  has  grown  up  again.  There 
are  other  streets,  beside,  very  diminutive  and  vague, 
where  you  pick  your  way  over  heaps  of  rubbish  and 
become  conscious  of  unexpected  faces  looking  at  you 
out  of  windows  as  detached  as  the  cherubic  heads. 
The  most  definite  thing  in  the  place  was  the  little 
cafe,  where  the  waiters,  I  think,  must  be  the  ghosts 
of  the  old  Visigoths ;  the  most  definite,  that  is,  after 
the  little  chateau  and  the  little  cathedral.  Every 
thing  in  the  Cite  is  little;  you  can  walk  round  the 
walls  in  twenty  minutes.  On  the  drawbridge  of  the 


148  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXIII. 

chateau,  which,  with  a  picturesque  old  face,  flanking 
towers,  and  a  dry  moat,  is  to-day  simply  a  bare  ca 
serne,  lounged  half  a  dozen  soldiers,  unusually  small. 
Nothing  could  be  more  odd  than  to  see  these  ob 
jects  enclosed  in  a  receptacle  which  has  much  of  the 
appearance  of  an  enormous  toy.  The  Cite  and  its 
population  vaguely  reminded  me  of  an  immense 
Noah's  ark. 


xxin. 

CARCASSONNE  dates  from  the  Eoman  occupation  of 
Gaul.  The  place  commanded  one  of  the  great  roads 
into  Spain,  and  in  the  fourth  century  Komans  and 
Franks  ousted  each  other  from  such  a  point  of  van 
tage.  In  the  year  436,  Theodoric,  King  of  the  Visi 
goths,  superseded  both  these  parties ;  and  it  is  during 
his  occupation  that  the  inner  enceinte  was  raised 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  Eoman  fortifications.  Most  of 
the  Visigoth  towers  that  are  still  erect  are  seated 
upon  Koman  substructions  which  appear  to  have  been 
formed  hastily,  probably  at  the  moment  of  the  Frank- 
ish  invasion.  The  authors  of  these  solid  defences, 
though  occasionally  disturbed,  held  Carcassonne  and 
the  neighboring  country,  in  which  they  had  estab 
lished  their  kingdom  of  Septimania,  till  the  year  713, 
when  they  were  expelled  by  the  Moors  of  Spain,  who 
ushered  in  an  unillumined  period  of  four  centuries,  of 
which  no  traces  remain.  These  facts  I  derived  from 
a  source  no  more  recondite  than  a  pamphlet  by  M. 
Viollet-le-Duc,  —  a  very  luminous  description  of  the 
fortifications,  which  you  may  buy  from  the  accoin- 


XXIII.]  CARCASSONNE.  149 

plished  custodian.  The  writer  makes  a  jump  to  the 
year  1209,  when  Carcassonne,  then  forming  part  of 
the  realm  of  the  viscounts  of  Beziers  and  infected 
by  the  Albigensian  heresy,  was  besieged,  in  the  name 
of  the  Pope,  by  the  terrible  Sirnon  de  Montfort  and 
his  army  of  crusaders.  Simon  was  accustomed  to 
success,  and  the  town  succumbed  in  the  course  of 
a  fortnight.  Thirty-one  years  later,  having  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  King  of  France,  it  was  again 
besieged  by  the  young  Eaymond  de  Trincavel,  the 
last  of  the  viscounts  of  Beziers;  and  of  this  siege 
M.  Viollet-le-Duc  gives  a  long  and  minute  account, 
which  the  visitor  who  has  a  head  for  such  things  may 
follow,  with  the  brochure  in  hand,  on  the  fortifica 
tions  themselves.  The  young  Eaymond  de  Trincavel, 
baffled  and  repulsed,  retired  at  the  end  of  twenty- 
four  days.  Saint  Louis  and  Philip  the  Bold,  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  multiplied  the  defences  of 
Carcassonne,  which  was  one  of  the  bulwarks  of  their 
kingdom  on  the  Spanish  quarter ;  and  from  this  time 
forth,  being  regarded  as  impregnable,  the  place  had 
nothing  to  fear.  It  was  not  even  attacked;  and 
when,  in  1355,  Edward  the  Black  Prince  marched 
into  it,  the  inhabitants  had  opened  the  gates  to  the 
conqueror  before  whom  all  Languedoc  was  prostrate. 
I  am  not  one  of  those  who,  as  I  said  just  now,  have 
a  head  for  such  things,  and  having  extracted  these 
few  facts  had  made  all  the  use  of  M.  Viollet-le-Duc's 
pamphlet  of  which  I  was  capable. 

I  have  mentioned  that  my  obliging  friend  the 
amourcux-fou  handed  ine  over  to  the  door-keeper  of 
the  citadel.  I  should  add  that  I  was  at  first  com 
mitted  to  the  wife  of  this  functionary,  a  stout  peasant- 


150  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXHI. 

woman,  who  took  a  key  down  from  a  nail,  conducted 
me  to  a  postern  door,  and  ushered  me  into  the  pres 
ence  of  her  husband.  Having  just  begun  his  rounds 
with  a  party  of  four  persons,  he  was  not  many  steps 
in  advance.  I  added  myself  perforce  to  this  party, 
which  was  not  brilliantly  composed,  except  that  two 
of  its  members  were  gendarmes  in  full  toggery,  who 
announced  in  the  course  of  our  tour  that  they  had 
been  stationed  for  a  year  at  Carcassonne,  and  -had 
never  before  had  the  curiosity  to  come  up  to  the  Cite. 
There  was  something  brilliant,  certainly,  in  that. 
The  gardien  was  an  extraordinarily  typical  little 
Frenchman,  who  struck  me  even  more  forcibly  than 
the  wonders  of  the  inner  enceinte ;  and  as  I  am 
bound  to  assume,  at  whatever  cost  to  my  literary 
vanity,  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  danger  of  his 
reading  these  remarks,  I  may  treat  him  as  public 
property.  With  his  diminutive  stature  and  his  per 
pendicular  spirit,  his  flushed  face,  expressive  protuber 
ant  eyes,  high  peremptory  voice,  extreme  volubility, 
lucidity,  and  neatness  of  utterance,  he  reminded  me 
of  the  gentry  who  figure  in  the  revolutions  of  his 
native  land.  If  he  was  not  a  fierce  little  Jacobin, 
he  ought  to  have  been,  for  I  am  sure  there  were 
many  men  of  his  pattern  on  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety.  He  knew  absolutely  what  he  was  about, 
understood  the  place  thoroughly,  and  constantly  re 
minded  his  audience  of  what  he  himself  had  done  in 
the  way  of  excavations  and  reparations.  He  described 
himself  as  the  brother  of  the  architect  of  the  work 
actually  going  forward  (that  which  has  been  done 
since. the  death  of  M.  Viollet-le-Duc,  I  suppose  he 
meant),  and  this  fact  was  more  illustrative  than  all 


XXIII.]  CARCASSONNE.  151 

tiie  others.  It  reminded  me,  as  one  is  reminded  at 
every  turn,  of  the  democratic  conditions  of  French 
life :  a  man  of  the  people,  with  a  wife  en  bonnet, 
extremely  intelligent,  full  of  special  knowledge,  and 
yet  remaining  essentially  of  the  people,  and  showing 
his  intelligence  with  a  kind  of  ferocity,  of  defiance. 
Such  a  personage  helps  one  to  understand  the  red 
radicalism  of  France,  the  revolutions,  the  barricades, 
the  sinister  passion  for  theories.  (I  do  not,  of  course, 
take  upon  myself  to  say  that  the  individual  I  de 
scribe  —  who  can  know  nothing  of  the  liberties  I  am 
taking  with  him  • —  is  actually  devoted  to  these  ideals ; 
I  only  mean  that  many  such  devotees  must  have  his 
qualities.)  In  just  the  nuance  that  I  have  tried  to 
indicate  here,  it  is  a  terrible  pattern  of  man.  Per 
meated  in  a  high  degree  by  civilization,  it  is  yet 
untouched  by  the  desire  which  one  finds  in  the  Eng 
lishman,  in  proportion  as  he  rises  in  the  world,  to 
approximate  to  the  figure  of  the  gentleman.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  nettcte,  a  faculty  of  exposition,  such  as 
the  English'  gentleman  is  rarely  either  blessed  or 
cursed  with. 

This  brilliant,  this  suggestive  warden  of  Carcas 
sonne  marched  us  about  for  an  hour,  haranguing,  ex 
plaining,  illustrating,  as  he  went ;  it  was  a  complete 
little  lecture,  such  as  might  have  been  delivered  at 
the  Lowell  Institute,  on  the  manner  in  which  a  first- 
rate  place  forte  used  to  be  attacked  and  defended. 
Our  peregrinations  mad«  it  very  clear  that  Carcassonne 
was  impregnable ;  it  is  impossible  to  imagine,  without 
having  seen  them,  such  refinements  of  immurement, 
such  ingenuities  of  resistance.  We  passed  along 
the  battlements  and  chemins  de  ronde,  ascended  and 


152  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXIIL 

descended  towers,  crawled  under  arches,  peered  out 
of  loop-holes,  lowered  ourselves  into  dungeons,  halted 
in  all  sorts  of  tight  places,  while  the  purpose  of  some 
thing  or  other  was  described  to  us.  It  was  very 
curious,  very  interesting ;  above  all,  it  was  very  pic 
torial,  and  involved  perpetual  peeps  into  the  little 
crooked,  crumbling,  sunny,  grassy,  empty  Cite*.  In 
places,  as  you  stand  upon  it,  the  great  towered  and 
embattled  enceinte  produces  an  illusion ;  it  looks  as 
if  it  were  still  equipped  and  defended.  One  vivid 
challenge,  at  any  rate,  it  flings  down  before  you ;  it 
calls  upon  you  to  make  up  your  mind  on  the  matter 
of  restoration.  For  myself,  I  have  no  hesitation ;  I 
prefer  in  every  case  the  ruined,  however  ruined,  to 
the  reconstructed,  however  splendid.  What  is  left  is 
more  precious  than  what  is  added  :  the  one  is  history, 
the  other  is  fiction  ;  and  I  like  the  former  the  better  of 
the  two,  —  it  is  so  much  more  romantic.  One  is  posi 
tive,  so  far  as  it  goes  ;  the  other  fills  up  the  void  with 
things  more  dead  than  the  void  itself,  inasmuch  as 
they  have  never  had  life.  After  that  I  am  free  to 
say  that  the  restoration  of  Carcassonne  is  a  splendid 
achievement.  The  little  custodian  dismissed  us  at 
last,  after  having,  as  usual,  inducted  us  into  the  inevi 
table  repository  of  photographs.  These  photographs 
are  a  great  nuisance,  all  over  the  Midi.  They  are 
exceedingly  bad,  for  the  most  part ;  and  the  worst  — 
those  in  the  form  of  the  hideous  little  album-pano 
rama —  are  thrust  upon  you  at  every  turn.  They 
are  a  kind  of  tax  that  you  must  pay  ;  the  best  way  is 
to  pay  to  be  let  off.  It  was  not  to  be  denied  that 
there  was  a  relief  in  separating  from  our  accomplished 
guide,  whose  manner  of  imparting  information  re- 


XXIII.]  CAKCASSONNE.  153 

minded  me  of  the  energetic  process  by  which  I  have 
seen  mineral  waters  bottled.  All  this  while  the 
afternoon  had  grown  more  lovely ;  the  sunset  had 
deepened,  the  horizon  of  hills  grown  purple ;  the 
mass  of  the  Canigou  became  more  delicate,  yet 
more  distinct.  The  day  had  so  far  faded  that  the  in 
terior  of  the  little  cathedral  was  wrapped  in  twilight, 
into  which  the  glowing  windows  projected  something 
of  their  color.  This  church  has  high  beauty  and 
value,  but  I  will  spare  the  reader  a  presentation  of 
details  which  I  myself  had  no  opportunity  to  master. 
It  consists  of  a  romanesque  nave,  of  the  end  of  the 
eleventh  century,  and  a  gothic  choir  and  transepts  of 
vthe  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  ;  and,  shut  up  in  its 
i  citadel  like  a  precious  casket  in  a  cabinet,  it  seems — 
br  seemed  at  that  hour  —  to  have  a  sort  of  double 
sanctity.  After  leaving  it  and  passing  out  of  the 
two  circles  of  walls,  I  treated  myself,  in  the  most 
infatuated  manner,  to  another  walk  round  the  Cite. 
It  is  certainly  this  general  impression  that  is  most 
striking,  —  the  impression  from  outside,  where  the 
whole  place  detaches  itself  at  once  from  the  land 
scape.  In  the  warm  southern  dusk  it  looked  more 
than  ever  like  a  city  in  a  fairy-tale.  To  make  the 
tiling  perfect,  a  white  young  moon,  in  its  first  quarter, 
came  out  and  hung  just  over  the  dark  silhouette.  It 
was  hard  to  come  away,  —  to  incommode  one's  self 
for  anything  so  vulgar  as  a  railway-train;  I  would 
gladly  have  spent  the  evening  in  revolving  round  the 
walls  of  Carcassonne.  But  I  had  in  a  measure  en 
gaged  to  proceed  to  Narbonne,  and  there  was  a  certain 
magic  in  that  name  which  gave  me  strength,  —  Nar- 
bonne,  the  richest  city  in  Eoman  Gaul. 


154  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXIV. 


XXIV. 

AT  Narbonne  I  took  up  my  abode  at  the  house  of  a 
serrurier  mecanicien,  and  was  very  thankful  for  the 
accommodation.  It  was  my  misfortune  to  arrive  at 
this  ancient  city  late  at  night,  on  the  eve  of  market- 
day  ;  and  market-day  at  Narbonne  is  a  very  serious 
affair.  The  inns,  on  this  occasion,  are  stuffed  with 
wine-dealers ;  for  the  country  roundabout,  dedicated 
almost  exclusively  to  Bacchus,  has  hitherto  escaped 
the  phylloxera.  This  deadly  enemy  of  the  grape  is 
encamped  over  the  Midi  in  a  hundred  places ;  blighted 
vineyards  and  ruined  proprietors  being  quite  the  or 
der  of  the  day.  The  signs  of  distress  are  more  fre 
quent  as  you  advance  into  Provence,  many  of  the 
vines  being  laid  under  water,  in  the  hope  of  washing 
the  plague  away.  There  are  healthy  regions  still, 
however,  and  the  vintners  find  plenty  to  do  at  Nar- 
bonne.  The  traffic  in  wine  appeared  to  be  the  sole 
thought  of  the  Narbonnais ;  every  one  I  spoke  to 
had  something  to  say  about  the  harvest  of  gold  that 
bloomed  under  its  influence.  "  C'est  inoui,  monsieur, 
1'argent  qu'il  y  a  dans  ce  pays.  Des  gens  &  qui  la 
vente  de  leur  vin  rapporte  jusqu'a  500,000  francs  par 
an."  That  little  speech,  addressed  to  me  by  a  gentle 
man  at  the  inn,  gives  the  note  of  these  revelations. 
It  must  be  said  that  there  was  little  in  the  appear 
ance  either  of  the  town  or  of  its  population  to  suggest 
the  possession  of  such  treasures.  Narbonne  is  a  sale 
petite  mile  in  all  the  force  of  the  term,  and  my  first 
impression  on  arriving  there  was  an  extreme  regret 
that  I  had  not  remained  for  the  night  at  the  lovely 


XXIV.]  NAEBONNE.  155 

Carcassonne.  My  journey  from  that  delectable  spot 
lasted  a  couple  of  hours,  and  was  performed  in  dark 
ness,  —  a  darkness  not  so  dense,  however,  but  that  I 
was  able  to  make  out,  as  we  passed  it,  the  great  figure 
of  Beziers,  whose  ancient  roofs  and  towers,  clustered 
on  a  goodly  hill-top,  looked  as  fantastic  as  you  please. 
I  know  not  what  appearance  Beziers  may  present  by 
day;  but  by  night  it  has  quite  the  grand  air.  On 
issuing  from  the  station  at  Narbonne,  I  found  that 
the  only  vehicle  in  waiting  was  a  kind  of  bastard 
tramcar,  a  thing  shaped  as  if  it  had  been  meant  to 
go  upon  rails ;  that  is,  equipped  with  small  wheels, 
placed  beneath  it,  and  with  a  platform  at  either  end, 
but  destined  to  rattle  over  the  stones  like  the  most 
vulgar  of  omnibuses.  To  complete  the  oddity  of  this 
conveyance,  it  was  under  the  supervision,  not  of  a 
conductor,  but  of  a  conductress.  A  fair  young  woman^ 
with  a  pouch  suspended  from  her  girdle,  had  com 
mand  of  the  platform  ;  and  as  soon  as  the  car  was  full 
she  jolted  us  into  the  town  through  clouds  of  the 
thickest  dust  I  ever  have  swallowed.  I  have  had 
occasion  to  speak  of  the  activity  of  women  in  France, 
—  of  the  way  they  are  always  in  the  ascendant ;  and 
here  was  a  signal  example  of  their  general  utility. 
The  young  lady  I  have  mentioned  conveyed  her 
whole  company  to  the  wretched  little  Hotel  de  France, 
where  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  some  of  them  found  a 
lodging.  For  myself,  I  was  informed  that  the  place 
was  crowded  from  cellar  to  attic,  and  that  its  inmates 
were  sleeping  three  or  four  in  a  room.  At  Carcas 
sonne  I  should  have  had  a  bad  bed,  but  at  Narbonne, 
apparently,  I  was  to  have  no  bed  at  all.  I  passed  an 
hour  or  two  of  flat  suspense,  while  fate  settled  the 


156  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXIV. 

question  of  whether  I  should  go  on  to  Perpignan, 
return  to  Beziers,  or  still  discover  a  modest  couch  at 
Narbonne.  I  shall  not  have  suffered  in  vain,  how 
ever,  if  my  example  serves  to  deter  other  travellers 
from  alighting  unannounced  at  that  city  on  a  Wednes 
day  evening.  The  retreat  to  Beziers,  not  attempted 
in  time,  proved  impossible,  and  I  was  assured  that 
at  Perpignan,  which  I  should  not  reach  till  midnight, 
the  affluence  of  wine-dealers  was  not  less  than  at 
Narbonne.  I  interviewed  every  hostess  in  the  town, 
and  got  no  satisfaction  but  distracted  shrugs.  Finally, 
at  an  advanced  hour,  one  of  the  servants  of  the  Hotel 
de  France,  where  I  had  attempted  to  dine,  came  to 
me  in  triumph  to  proclaim  that  he  had  secured  for 
me  a  charming  apartment  in  a  maison  lourgeoise.  I 
took  possession  of  it  gratefully,  in  spite  of  its  having 
an  entrance  like  a  stable,  and  being  pervaded  by  an 
odor  compared  with  which  that  of  a  stable  would 
have  been  delicious.  As  I  have  mentioned,  my  land 
lord  was  a  locksmith,  and  he  had  strange  machines 
which  rumbled  and  whirred  in  the  rooms  below  my 
own.  Nevertheless,  I  slept,  and  I  dreamed  of  Car 
cassonne.  It  was  better  to  do  that  than  to  dream 
of  the  Hotel  de  France. 

I  was  obliged  to  cultivate  relations  with  the  cuisine 
of  this  establishment.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
meridional;  indeed,  both  the  dirty  little  inn  and 
Narbonne  at  large  seemed  to  me  to  have  the  infirmi 
ties  of  the  south,  without  its  usual  graces.  Narrow, 
noisy,  shabby,  belittered  and  encumbered,  filled  with 
clatter  and  chatter,  the  Hotel  de  France  would  have 
been  described  in  perfection  by  Alphonse  Daudet. 
For  what  struck  me  above  all  in  it  was  the  note  of 


XXIV.]  NARBONNE.  157 

the  Midi,  as  he  has  represented  it,  —  the  sound  of 
universal  talk.  The  landlord  sat  at  supper  with  sun 
dry  friends,  in  a  kind  of  glass  cage,  with  a  genial 
indifference  to  arriving  guests ;  the  waiters  tumbled 
over  the  loose  luggage  in  the  hall ;  the  travellers  who 
had  been  turned  away  leaned  gloomily  against  door 
posts;  and  the  landlady,  surrounded  by  confusion, 
unconscious  of  responsibility,  and  animated  only  by 
the  spirit  of  conversation,  bandied  high- voiced  com 
pliments  with  the  wycigeurs  de  commerce.  At  ten 
o'clock  in  the  morning  there  was  a  table  d'hote  for 
breakfast, — a  wonderful  repast,  which  overflowed 
into  every  room  and  pervaded  the  whole  establish 
ment.  I  sat  down  with  a  hundred  hungry  marketers, 
fat,  brown,  greasy  men,  with  a  good  deal  of  the  rich 
soil  of  Languedoc  adhering  to  their  hands  and  their 
boots.  I  mention  the  latter  articles  because  they 
almost  put  them  on  the  table.  It  was  very  hot,  and 
there  were  swarms  of  flies  ;  the  viands  had  the  strong 
est  odor ;  there  was  in  particular  a  horrible  mixture 
known  as  gras-doulle,  a  light  gray,  glutinous,  nause 
ating  mess,  which  my  companions  devoured  in  large 
quantities.  A  man  opposite  to  me  had  the  dirtiest 
fingers  I  ever  saw ;  a  collection  of  fingers  which  in 
England  would  have  excluded  him  from  a  farmers' 
ordinary.  The  conversation  was  mainly  bucolic ; 
though  a  part  of  it,  I  remember,  at  the  table  at  which 
I  sat,  consisted  of  a  discussion  -as  to  whether  or  no 
the  maid-servant  were  sage,  —  a  discussion  which 
went  on  under  the  nose  of  this  young  lady,  as  she 
carried  about  the  dreadful  gras-doulle,  and  to  which 
she  contributed  the  most  convincing  blushes.  It  was 
thoroughly  meridional. 


158  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXIV. 

In  going  to  Narbonne  I  had  of  course  counted  upon 
Eomau  remains ;  but  when  I  went  forth  in  search  of 
them  I  perceived  that  I  had  hoped  too  fondly.  There 
is  really  nothing  in  the  place  to  speak  of ;  that  is,  on 
the  day  of  niy  visit  there  was  nothing  but  the  market, 
which  was  in  complete  possession.  "  This  intricate, 
curious,  but  lifeless  town,"  Murray  calls  it ;  yet  to 
me  it  appeared  overflowing  with  life.  Its  streets  are 
mere  crooked,  dirty  lanes,  bordered  with  perfectly 
insignificant  houses  ;  but  they  were  filled  with  the 
same  clatter  and  chatter  that  I  had  found  at  the  hotel. 
The  market  was  held  partly  in  the  little  square  of  the 
hotel  de  ville,  a  structure  which  a  flattering  wood-cut 
in  the  Guide-Joanne  had  given  rne  a  desire  to  behold. 
The  reality  was  not  impressive,  the  old  color  of  the 
front  having  been  completely  restored  away.  Such 
interest  as  it  superficially  possesses  it  derives  from  a 
fine  medireval  tower  which  rises  beside  it,  with  turrets 
at  the  angles,  —  always  a  picturesque  thing.  The  rest 
of  the  market  was  held  in  another  place,  still  shabbier 
than  the  first,  which  lies  beyond  the  canal.  The 
Canal  du  Midi  flows  through  the  town,  and,  spanned 
at  this  point  by  a  small  suspension-bridge,  presented 
a  certain  sketchability.  On  the  further  side  were  the 
venders  and  chafferers, — old  women  under  awnings 
and  big  umbrellas,  rickety  tables  piled  high  with 
fruit,  white  caps  and  brown  faces,  blouses,  sabots, 
donkeys.  Beneath  this  picture  was  another,  —  a  long 
row  of  washerwomen,  on  their  knees  on  the  edge  of 
the  canal,  pounding  and  wringing  the  dirty  linen  of 
Narbonne,  —  no  great  quantity,  to  judge  by  the  cos 
tume  of  the  people.  Innumerable  rusty  men,  scat 
tered  all  over  the  place,  were  buying  and  selling  wine, 


XXIV.]  NARBONNE.  159 

straddling  about  in  pairs,  in  groups,  with  their  hands 
in  their  pockets,  and  packed  together  at  the  doors  of 
the  cafe's.  They  were  mostly  fat  and  brown  and  un 
shaven  ;  they  ground  their  teeth  as  they  talked ;  they 
were  very  meridionaux. 

The  only  two  lions  at  Narbonne  are  the  cathedral 
and  the  museum,  the  latter  of  which  is  quartered  in 
the  hotel  de  ville.     The  cathedral,  closely  shut  in  by 
houses,  and  with  the  west  front  undergoing  repairs,  is 
singular  in  two  respects.     It  consists  exclusively  of  a 
choir,  which  is  of  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century 
and  the  beginning  of  the  next,  and  of  great  magnifi 
cence.     There  is  absolutely  nothing  else.     This  choir, 
of  extraordinary  elevation,  forms  the  whole  church. 
I  sat  there  a  good  while ;  there  was  no  other  visitor. 
I  had  taken  a  great  dislike  to  poor  little  Narbonne, 
which  struck  me  as  sordid  and  overheated,  and  this 
place  seemed  to  extend  to  me,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  privilege  of  sanctuary.    It  is  a  very  solemn  corner. 
The  other  peculiarity  of  the  cathedral  is  that,  exter 
nally,  it  bristles  with  battlements,  having  anciently 
formed  part  of  the  defences  of  the  archeveche,  which 
is  beside  it  and  which  connects  it  with  the  hotel  de 
ville.     This  combination  of  the  church  and  the  for 
tress  is  very  curious,  and  during  the  Middle  Ages 
was  not  without  its  value.     The  palace  of  the  former 
archbishops  of  Narbonne  (the  hotel  de  ville  of  to-day 
forms  part  of  it)  was  both  an  asylum  and  an  arsenal 
during  the  hideous  wars  by  which  the  Languedoc  was 
ravaged  in  the  thirteenth  century.     The  whole  mass 
of  buildings  is  jammed  together  in  a  manner  that 
from  certain  points  of  view  makes  it  far  from  appar 
ent  which  feature  is  which.     The  museum  occupies 


160  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXV. 

several  chambers  at  the  top  of  the  hotel  de  ville,  and 
is  not  an  imposing  collection.  It  was  closed,  but  I 
induced  the  portress  to  let  me  in,  —  a  silent,  cadaver 
ous  person,  in  a  black  coif,  like  a  beyuine,  who  sat 
knitting  in  one  of  the  windows  while  I  went  the 
rounds.  The  number  of  Eoman  fragments  is  small, 
and  their  quality  is  not  the  finest ;  I  must  add  that 
this  impression  was  hastily  gathered.  There  is  indeed 
a  work  of  art  in  one  of  the  rooms  which  creates  a 
presumption  in  favor  of  the  place,  —  the  portrait 
(rather  a  good  one)  of  a  citizen  of  Narbonne,  whose 
name  I  forget,  who  is  described  as  having  devoted  all 
his  time  and  his  intelligence  to  collecting  the  objects 
by  which  the  visitor  is  surrounded.  This  excellent 
man  was  a  connoisseur,  and  the  visitor  is  doubtless 
often  an  ignoramus. 


XXV. 

"  Cette,  with  its  glistening  houses  white, 
Curves  with  the  curving  beach  away 
To  where  the  lighthouse  beacons  bright, 
Far  in  the  bay." 

THAT  stanza  of  Matthew  Arnold's,  which  I  hap 
pened  to  remember,  gave  a  certain  importance  to  the 
half -hour  I  spent  in  the  buffet  of  the  station  at  Cette 
while  I  waited  for  the  train  to  Montpellier.  I  had 
left  Narbonne  in  the  afternoon,  and  by  the  time  I 
reached  Cette  the  darkness  had  descended.  I  there 
fore  missed  the  sight  of  the  glistening  houses,  and  had 
to  console  myself  with  that  of  the  beacon  in  the 
bay,  as  well  as  with  a  bouillon  of  which  I  partook 


XXV.]  MONTPELLIER.  161 

at  the  buffet  aforesaid ;  for,  since  the  morning,  I  had 
not  ventured  to  return  to  the  table  d'hote  at  Nar- 
bonne.  The  H6tel  Nevet,  at  Montpellier,  which  I 
reached  an  hour  later,  has  an  ancient  renown  all  over 
the  south  of  France,  —  advertises  itself,  I  believe, 
as  le  plus  vaste  du  midi.  It  seemed  to  me  the  model 
of  a  good  provincial  inn;  a  big  rambling,  creaking 
establishment,  with  brown,  labyrinthine  corridors,  a 
queer  old  open-air  vestibule,  into  which  the  diligence, 
in  the  Ion  temps,  used  to  penetrate,  and  an  hospitality 
more  expressive  than  that  of  the  new  caravansaries. 
It  dates  from  the  days  when  Montpellier  was  still 
accounted  a  fine  winter  residence  for  people  with 
weak  lungs ;  and  this  rather  melancholy  tradition, 
together  with  the  former  celebrity  of  the  school  of 
medicine  still  existing  there,  but  from  which  the 
glory  has  departed,  helps  to  account  for  its  combi 
nation  of  high  antiquity  and  vast  proportions.  The 
old  hotels  were  usually  more  concentrated;  but  the 
school  of  medicine  passed  for  one  of  the  attractions  of 
Montpellier.  Long  before  Mentone  was  discovered 
or  Colorado  invented,  British  invalids  travelled  down 
through  France  in  the  post-chaise  or  the  public  coach, 
to  spend  their  winters  in  the  wonderful  place  which 
boasted  both  a  climate  and  a  faculty.  The  air  is 
mild,  no  doubt,  but  there  are  refinements  of  mildness 
which  were  not  then  suspected,  and  which  in  a  more 
analytic  age  have  carried  the  annual  wave  far  be 
yond  Montpellier.  The  place  is  charming,  all  the 
same ;  and  it  served  the  purpose  of  John  Locke ;  who 
made  a  long  stay  there,  between  1675  and  1679,  and 
became  acquainted  with  a  noble  fellow-visitor,  Lord 
Pembroke,  to  whom  he  dedicated  the  famous  Essay. 

11 


162  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXV. 

There  are  places  that  please,  without  your  being  able 
to  say  wherefore,  and  Montpellier  is  one  of  the  num 
ber.  It  has  some  charming  views,  from  the  great 
promenade  of  the  Peyrou ;  but  its  position  is  not 
strikingly  fair.  Beyond  this  it  contains  a  good  mu 
seum  and  the  long  facades  of  its  school,  but  these  are 
its  only  definite  treasures.  Its  cathedral  struck  me 
as  quite  the  weakest  I  had  seen,  and  I  remember 
no  other  monument  that  made  up  for  it.  The  place 
has  neither  the  gayety  of  a  modern  nor  the  solemnity 
of  an  ancient  town,  and  it  is  agreeable  as  certain 
women  are  agreeable  who  are  neither  beautiful  nor 
clever.  An  Italian  would  remark  that  it  is  sympa 
thetic  ;  a  German  would  admit  that  it  is  gemuthlicli. 
I  spent  two  days  there,  mostly  in  the  rain,  and  even 
under  these  circumstances  I  carried  away  a  kindly 
impression.  I  think  the  Hotel  Nevet  had  some 
thing  to  do  with  it,  and  the  sentiment  of  relief  with 
which,  in  a  quiet,  even  a  luxurious,  room  that  looked 
out  on  a  garden,  I  reflected  that  I  had  washed  my 
hands  of  Narbonne.  The  phylloxera  has  destroyed 
the  vines  in  the  country  that  surrounds  Montpellier, 
and  at  that  moment  I  was  capable  of  rejoicing  in  the 
thought  that  I  should  not  breakfast  with  vintners. 

The  gem  of  the  place  is  the  Musee  Fabre,  one  of 
the  best  collections  of  paintings  in  a  provincial  city. 
Francois  Fabre,  a  native  of  Montpellier,  died  there  in 
1837,  after  having  spent  a  considerable  part  of  his 
life  in  Italy,  where  he  had  collected  a  good  many 
valuable  pictures  and  some  very  poor  ones,  the  latter 
class  including  several  from  his  own  hand.  He  was 
the  hero  of  a  remarkable  episode,  having  succeeded 
no  less  a  person  than  Vittorio  Alfieri  in  the  affections 


XXV.]  MONTPELLIER.  163 

of  no  less  a  person  than  Louise  de  Stolberg,  Countess 
of  Albany,  widow  of  no  less  a  person  than  Charles 
Edward  Stuart,  the  second  pretender  to  the  British 
crown.  Surely  no  woman  ever  was  associated  senti 
mentally  with  three  figures  more  diverse,  —  a  dis 
qualified  sovereign,  an  Italian  dramatist,  and  a  bad 
French  painter.  The  productions  of  M.  Fabre,  who 
followed  in  the  steps  of  David,  bear  the  stamp  of  a 
cold  mediocrity ;  there  is  not  much  to  be  said  even 
for  the  portrait  of  the  genial  countess  (her  life  has 
been  written  by  M.  Saint-Eene-Taillandier,  who  de 
picts  her  as  delightful),  which  hangs  in  Florence, 
in  the  gallery  of  the  Uffizzi,  and  makes  a  pendant  to 
a  likeness  of  Alfieri  by  the  same  author.  Stendhal, 
in  his  "  Memoires  d'un  Touriste,"  says  that  this  work 
of  art  represents  her  as  a  cook  who  has  pretty  hands. 
I  am  delighted  to  have  an  opportunity  of  quoting 
Stendhal,  whose  two  volumes  of  the  "  Memoires  d'un 
Touriste"  every  traveller  in  France  should  carry  in 
his  portmanteau.  I  have  had  this  opportunity  more 
than  once,  for  I  have  met  him  at  Tours,  at  Nantes, 
at  Bourges  ;  and  everywhere  he  is  suggestive.  But 
he  has  the  defect  that  he  is  never  pictorial,  that  he 
never  by  any  chance  makes  an  image,  and  that  his 
style  is  perversely  colorless,  for  a  man  so  fond  of  con 
templation.  His  taste  is  often  singularly  false ;  it  is 
the  taste  of  the  early  years  of  the  present  century, 
the  period  that  produced  clocks  surmounted  with 
sentimental  "  subjects."  Stendhal  does  not  admire 
these  clocks,  but  he  almost  does.  He  admires  Do- 
rnenichino  and  Guercino,  and  prizes  the  Bolognese 
school  of  painters  because  they  "  spoke  to  the  soul." 
He  is  a  votary  of  the  new  classic,  is  fond  of  tall,  square, 


164  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXV. 

regular  buildings,  and  thinks  Nantes,  for  instance,  full 
of  the  "  air  noble."  It  was  a  pleasure  to  me  to  reflect 
that  five-and-forty  years  ago  he  had  alighted  in  that 
city,  at  the  very  inn  in  which  I  spent  a  night,  and 
which  looks  down  on  the  Place  Graslin  and  the 
theatre.  The  hotel  that  was  the  best  in  1837  ap 
pears  to  be  the  best  to-day.  On  the  subject  of 
Touraine,  Stendhal  is  extremely  refreshing ;  he  finds 
the  scenery  meagre  and  much  overrated,  and  pro 
claims  his  opinion  with  perfect  frankness.  He  does, 
however,  scant  justice  to  the  banks  of  the  Loire ; 
his  want  of  appreciation  of  the  picturesque  —  want 
of  the  sketcher's  sense  —  causes  him  to  miss  half  the 
charm  of  a  landscape  which  is  nothing  if  not  "  quiet," 
as  a  painter  would  say,  and  of  which  the  felicities 
reveal  themselves  only  to  waiting  eyes.  He  even 
despises  the  Indre,  the  river  of  Madame  Sand.  The 
"  Memoires  d'un  Touriste "  are  written  in  the  char 
acter  of  a  commercial  traveller,  and  the  author  has 
nothing  to  say  about  Chenonceaux  or  Chambord,  or 
indeed  about  any  of  the  chateaux  of  that  part  of 
France;  his  system  being  to  talk  only  of  the  large 
towns,  where  he  may  be  supposed  to  find  a  market 
for  his  goods.  It  was  his  ambition  to  pass  for  an 
ironmonger.  But  in  the  large  towns  he  is  usually 
excellent  company,  though  as  discursive  as  Sterne, 
and  strangely  indifferent,  for  a  man  of  imagination, 
to  those  superficial  aspects  of  things  which  the  poor 
pages  now  before  the  reader  are  mainly  an  attempt 
to  render.  It  is  his  conviction  that  Alfieri,  at  Flor 
ence,  bored  the  Countess  of  Albany  terribly ;  and  he 
adds  that  the  famous  Gallophobe  died  of  jealousy 
of  the  little  painter  from  Montpellier.  The  Countess 


XXV.]  MONTPELLIER.  165 

of  Albany  left  her  property  to  Fabre ;  and  I  suppose 
some  of  the  pieces  iii  the  museum  of  his  native  town 
used  to  hang  in  the  sunny  saloons  of  that  fine  old 
palace  on  the  Arno  which  is  still  pointed  out  to  the 
stranger  in  Florence  as  the  residence  of  Alfieri. 

The  institution  has  had  other  benefactors,  nota 
bly  a  certain  M.  Bruyas,  who  has  enriched  it  with 
an  extraordinary  number  of  portraits  of  himself.  As 
these,  however,  are  by , different  hands,  some  of  them 
distinguished,  we  may  suppose  that  it  was  less  the 
model  than  the  artists  to  whom  M.  Bruyas  wished 
to  give  publicity.  Easily  first  are  two  large  speci 
mens  of  David  Teniers,  which  are  incomparable  for 
brilliancy  and  a  glowing  perfection  of  execution.  I 
have  a  weakness  for  this  singular  genius,  who  com 
bined  the  delicate  with  the  grovelling,  and  I  have 
rarely  seen  richer  examples.  Scarcely  less  valuable 
is  a  Gerard  Dow  which  hangs  near  them,  though  it 
must  rank  lower  as  having  kept  less  of  its  freshness. 
This  Gerard  Dow  did  me  good;  for  a  master  is  a 
master,  whatever  he  may  paint.  It  represents  a  wo 
man  paring  carrots,  while  a  boy  before  her  exhibits  a 
mouse- trap  in  which  he  has  caught  a  frightened  vic 
tim.  The  good-wife  has  spread  a  cloth  on  the  top  of 
a  big  barrel  which  serves  her  as  a  table,  and  on  this 
brown,  greasy  napkin,  of  which  the  texture  is  won 
derfully  rendered,  lie  the  raw  vegetables  she  is  pre 
paring  for  domestic  consumption.  Beside  the  barrel 
is  a  large  caldron  lined  with  copper,  with  a  rim  of 
brass.  The  way  these  things  are  painted  brings  tears 
to  the  eyes  ;  but  they  give  the  measure  of  the  Musee 
Fabre,  where  two  specimens  of  Teniers  and  a  Gerard 
Dow  are  the  jewels.  The  Italian  pictures  are  of 


166  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXV. 

small  value ;  but  there  is  a  work  by  Sir  Joshua  Rey 
nolds,  said  to  be  the  only  one  in  France,  —  an  infant 
Samuel  in  prayer,  apparently  a  repetition  of  the  pic 
ture  in  England  which  inspired  the  little  plaster  im 
age,  disseminated  in  Protestant  lands,  that  we  used  to 
admire  in  our  childhood.  Sir  Joshua,  somehow,  was 
an  eminently  Protestant  painter;  no  one  can  forget 
that,  who  in  the  National  Gallery  in  London  has 
looked  at  the  picture  in  which  he  represents  several 
young  ladies  as  nymphs,  voluminously  draped,  hang 
ing  garlands  over  a  statue,  —  a  picture  suffused  inde 
finably  with  the  Anglican  spirit,  and  exasperating  to 
a  member  of  one  of  the  Latin  races.  It  is  an  odd 
chance,  therefore,  that  has  led  him  into  that  part  of 
France  where  Protestants  have  been  least  lien  vus. 
This  is  the  country  of  the  dragonnades  of  Louis  XI Y. 
and  of  the  pastors  of  the  desert.  From  the  garden  of 
the  Peyrou,  at  Montpellier,  you  may  see  the  hills  of 
the  Ce*vennes,  to  which  they  of  the  religion  fled  for 
safety,  and  out  of  which  they  were  hunted  and  harried. 
I  have  only  to  add,  in  regard  to  the  Musee  Fabre, 
that  it  contains  the  portrait  of  its  founder,  —  a  lit 
tle,  pursy,  fao-faced,  elderly  man,  whose  countenance 
contains  few  indications  of  the  power  that  makes  dis 
tinguished  victims.  He  is,  however,  just  such  a  per 
sonage  as  the  mind's  eye  sees  walking  on  the  terrace 
of  the  Peyrou  of  an  October  afternoon  in  the  early 
years  of  the  century ;  a  plump  figure  in  a  chocolate- 
colored  coat  and  a  culotte  that  exhibits  a  good  leg, 
—  a  culotte  provided  with  a  watch-fob  from  which  a 
heavy  seal  is  suspended.  This  Peyrou  (to  come  to 
it  at  last)  is  a  wonderful  place,  especially  to  be  found 
in  a  little  provincial  city.  France  is  certainly  the 


XXV.]  MONTPELLIER.  1(57 

country  of  towns  that  aim  at  completeness;  more 
than  in  other  lands,  they  contain  stately  features  as  a 
matter  of  course.  We  should  never  have  ceased  to 
hear  about  the  Peyrou,  if  fortune  had  placed  it  at  a 
Shrewsbury  or  a  Buffalo.  It  is  true  that  the  place 
enjoys  a  certain  celebrity  at  home,  which  it  amply 
deserves,  moreover ;  for  nothing  could  be  more  impres 
sive  and  monumental.  It  consists  of  an  "elevated 
platform,"  as  Murray  says, —  an  immense  terrace, 
laid  out,  in  the  highest  part  of  the  town,  as  a  garden, 
and  commanding  in  all  directions  a  view  which  in 
clear  weather  must  be  of  the  finest.  I  strolled  there 
in  the  intervals  of  showers,  and  saw  only  the  nearer 
beauties,  —  a  great  pompous  arch  of  triumph  in  honor 
of  Louis  XIV.  (which  is  not,  properly  speaking,  in 
the  garden,  but  faces  it,  straddling  across  the  place  by 
which  you  approach  it  from  the  town),  an  equestrian 
statue  of  that  monarch  set  aloft  in  the  middle  of  the 
terrace,  and  a  very  exalted  and  complicated  fountain, 
which  forms  a  background  to  the  picture.  This  foun 
tain  gushes  from  a  kind  of  hydraulic  temple,  or  cha 
teau  d'eau,  to  which  you  ascend  by  broad  flights  of 
steps,  and  which  is  fed  by  a  splendid  aqueduct, 
stretched  in  the  most  ornamental  and  unexpected 
manner  across  the  neighboring  valley.  All  this  work 
dates  from  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  The  com 
bination  of  features  —  the  triumphal  arch,  or  gate ; 
the  wide,  fair  terrace,  with  its  beautiful  view  ;  the 
statue  of  the  grand  monarch ;  the  big  architectural 
fountain,  which  would  not  surprise  one  at  Rome,  but 
does  surprise  one  at  Montpellier ;  and  to  complete  the 
effect,  the  extraordinary  aqueduct,  charmingly  fore 
shortened,  —  all  this  is  worthy  of  a  capital,  of  a  little 


168  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVI. 

court-city.  The  whole  place,  with  its  repeated  steps, 
its  balustrades,  its  massive  and  plentiful  stone-work, 
is  full  of  the  air  of  the  last  century,  —  sent  lien  son 
dix-kuiti&me  si&cle ;  none  the  less  so,  I  am  afraid,  that, 
as  I  read  in  my  faithful  Murray,  after  the  revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  the  block,  the  stake,  the  wheel, 
had  been  erected  here  for  the  benefit  of  the  desperate 
Camisards. 

XXVI. 

IT  was  a  pleasure  to  feel  one's  self  in  Provence 
again,  —  the  land  where  the  silver-gray  earth  is  im 
pregnated  with  the  light  of  the  sky.  To  celebrate 
the  event,  as  soon  as  I  arrived  at  Nimes  I  engaged 
a  caleche  to  convey  me  to  the  Pont  du  Gard.  The 
day  was  yet  young,  and  it  was  perfectly  fair ;  it  ap 
peared  well,  for  a  longish  drive,  to  take  advantage, 
without  delay,  of  such  security.  After  I  had  left 
the  town  I  became  more  intimate  with  that  Provencal 
charm  which  I  had  already  enjoyed  from  the  window 
of  tKe  train,  and  which  glowed  in  the  sweet  sunshine 
and  the  white  rocks,  and  lurked  in  the  smoke-puffs 
of  the  little  olives.  The  olive-trees  in  Provence  are 
half  the  landscape.  They  are  neither  so  tall,  so 
stout,  nor  so  richly  contorted  as  I  have  seen  them 
beyond  the  Alps  ;  but  this  mild  colorless  bloom  seems 
the  very  texture  of  the  country.  The  road  from 
Nimes,  for  a  distance  of  fifteen  miles,  is  superb ;  broad 
enough  for  an  army,  and  as  white  and  firm  as  a 
dinner-table.  It  stretches  away  over  undulations 
which  suggest  a  kind  of  harmony  ;  and  in  the  curves  it 
makes  through  the  wide,  free  country,  where  there  is 


XXVI.]          THE  PONT  DU  GAUD.  169 

never  a  hedge  or  a  wall,  and  the  detail  is  always 
exquisite,  there  is  something  majestic,  almost  pro 
cessional.  Some  twenty  minutes  before  I  reached 
the  little  inn  that  marks  the  termination  of  the  drive, 
my  vehicle  met  with  an  accident  which  just  missed 
being  serious,  and  which  engaged  the  attention  of  a 
gentleman,  who,  followed  by  his  groom  and  mounted 
on  a  strikingly  handsome  horse,  happened  to  ride  up 
at  the  moment.  This  young  man,  who,  with  his  good 
looks  and  charming  manner,  might  have  stepped  out 
of  a  novel  of  Octave  Feuillet,  gave  me  some  very 
intelligent  advice  in  reference  to  one  of  my  horses 
that  had  been  injured,  and  was  so  good  as  to  accom 
pany  me  to  the  inn,  with  the  resources  of  which  he 
was  acquainted,  to  see  that  his  recommendations  were 
carried  out.  The  result  of  our  interview  was  that  he 
invited  me  to  come  and  look  at  a  small  but  ancient 
chateau  in  the  neighborhood,  which  he  had  the  hap 
piness —  not  the  greatest  in  the  world,  he  intimated 
—  to  inhabit,  and  at  which  I  engaged  to  present 
myself  after  I  should  have  spent  an  hour  at  the 
Pont  du  Gard.  For  the  moment,  when  we  separated, 
I  gave  all  my  attention  to  that  great  structure.  You 
are  very  near  it  before  you  see  it ;  the  ravine  it  spans 
suddenly  opens  and  exhibits  the  picture.  The  scene 
at  this  point  grows  extremely  beautiful.  The  ravine 
is  the  valley  of  the  Gardon,  which  the  road  from 
Nimes  has  followed  some  time  without  taking  ac 
count  of  it,  but  which,  exactly  at  the  right  distance 
from  the  aqueduct,  deepens  and  expands,  and  puts 
on  those  characteristics  which  are  best  suited  to  give 
it  effect.  The  gorge  becomes  romantic,  still,  and  soli 
tary,  and,  with  its  white  rocks  and  wild  shrubbery, 


170  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVI. 

hangs  over  the  clear,  colored  river,  in  whose  slow 
course  there  is  here  and  there  a  deeper  pool.  Over 
the  valley,  from  side  to  side,  and  ever  so  high  in  the 
air,  stretch  the  three  tiers  of  the  tremendous  bridge. 
They  are  unspeakably  imposing,  and  nothing  could 
well  be  more  Kornan.  The  hugeness,  the  solidity, 
the  unexpectedness,  the  monumental  rectitude  of  the 
whole  thing  leave  you  nothing  to  say  —  at  the  time 
— and  make  you  stand  gazing.  You  simply  feel  that 
it  is  noble  and  perfect,  that  it  has  the  quality  of 
greatness.  A  road,  branching  from  the  highway,  de 
scends  to  the  level  of  the  river  and  passes  under  one 
of  the  arches.  This  road  has  a  wide  margin  of  grass 
and  loose  stones,  which  slopes  upward  into  the  bank  of 
the  ravine.  You  may  sit  here  as  long  as  you  please, 
staring  up  at  the  light,  strong  piers ;  the  spot  is  ex 
tremely  natural,  though  two  or  three  stone  benches, 
have  been  erected  on  it.  I  remained  there  an  hour 
and  got  a  complete  impression ;  the  place  was  per 
fectly  soundless,  and  for  the  time,  at  least,  lonely ; 
the  splendid  afternoon  had  begun  to  fade,  and  there 
was  a  fascination  in  the  object  I  had  come  to  see.  It 
came  to  pass  that  at  the  same  time  I  discovered  in  it 
a  certain  stupidity,  a  vague  brutality.  That  element' 
is  rarely  absent  from  great  Roman  work,  which  is 
wanting  in  the  nice  adaptation  of  the  means  to  the 
end.  The  means  are  always  exaggerated  ;  the  end  is 
so  much  more  than  attained.  The  Eoman  rigidity 
was  apt  to  overshoot  the  mark,  and  I  suppose  a  race 
which  could  do  nothing  small  is  as  defective  as  a  race 
that  can  do  nothing  great.  Of  this  Roman  rigidity 
the  Pont  du  Gard  is  an  admirable  example.  It  would 
be  a  great  injustice,  however,  not  to  insist  upon  its 


XXVI.]          THE  PONT  DU  GAUD.  171 

beauty,  —  a  kind  of  manly  beauty,  that  of  an  object 
constructed  not  to  please  but  to  serve,  and  impressive 
simply  from  the  scale  on  which  it  carries  out  this 
intention.  The  number  of  arches  in  each  tier  is  dif 
ferent  ;  they  are  smaller  and  more  numerous  as  they 
ascend.  The  preservation  of  the  thing  is  extraor 
dinary;  nothing  has  crumbled  or  collapsed;  every 
feature  remains ;  and  the  huge  blocks  of  stone,  of  a 
brownish-yellow  (as  if  they  had  been  baked  by  the 
Provencal  sun  for  eighteen  centuries),  pile  themselves, 
without  mortar  or  cement,  as  evenly  as  the  day  they 
were  laid  together.  All  this  to  carry  the  water  of  a 
couple  of  springs  to  a  little  provincial  city!  The 
conduit  on  the  top  has  retained  its  shape  and  traces 
of  the  cement  with  which  it  was  lined.  When  the 
vague  twilight  began  to  gather,  the  lonely  valley 
seemed  to  fill  itself  with  the  shadow  of  the  Eoman 
name,  as  if  the  mighty  empire  were  still  as  erect  as 
the  supports  of  the  aqueduct ;  and  it  was  open  to  a 
solitary  tourist,  sitting  there  sentimental,  to  believe 
that  no  people  has  ever  been,  or  will  ever  be,  as  great 
as  that,  measured,  as  we  measure  the  greatness  of 
an  individual,  by  the  push  they  gave  to  what  they 
undertook.  The  Pont  du  Gard  is  one  of  the  three 
or  four  deepest  impressions  they  have  left ;  it  speaks 
of  them  in  a  manner  with  which  they  might  have 
been  satisfied. 

I  feel  as  if  it  were  scarcely  discreet  to  indicate  the 
whereabouts  of  the  chateau  of  the  obliging  young 
man  I  had  met  on  the  way  from  Nlmes  ;  1  must  con 
tent  myself  with  saying  that  it  nestled  in  an  en 
chanting  valley,  —  dans  h  fond,  as  they  say  in  France, 
—  and  that  I  took  my  course  thither  on  foot,  after 


172  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVI. 

leaving  the  Pont  du  Gard.  I  find  it  noted  in  my 
journal  as  "  an  adorable  little  corner."  The  principal 
feature  of  the  place  is  a  couple  of  very  ancient  tow 
ers,  brownish-yellow  in  hue,  and  mantled  in  scarlet 
Virginia-creeper.  One  of  these  towers,  reputed  to  be 
of  Saracenic  origin,  is  isolated,  and  is  only  the  more 
effective;  the  other  is  incorporated  in  the  house, 
which  is  delightfully  fragmentary  and  irregular.  It 
had  got  to  be  late  by  this  time,  and  the  lonely  castel 
looked  crepuscular  and  mysterious.  An  old  house 
keeper  was  sent  for,  who  showed  me  the  rambling 
interior;  and  then  the  young  man  took  me  into  a 
dim  old  drawing-room,  which  had  no  less  than  four 
chimney-pieces,  all  unlighted,  and  gave  me  a  refec 
tion  of  fruit  and  sweet  wine.  When  I  praised  the 
wine  and  asked  him  what  it  was,  he  said  simply, 
"  C'est  du  vin  de  ma  mere  ! "  Throughout  my  little 
journey  I  had  never  yet  felt  myself  so  far  from  Paris ; 
and  this  was  a  sensation  I  enjoyed  more  than  my 
host,  who  was  an  involuntary  exile,  consoling  him 
self  with  laying  out  a  manege,  which  he  showed  me 
as  I  walked  away.  His  civility  was  great,  and  I  was 
greatly  touched  by  it.  On  my  way  back  to  the  little 
inn  where  I  had  left  my  vehicle,  I  passed  the  Pont 
du  Gard,  and  took  another  look  at  it.  Its  great 
arches  made  windows  for  the  evening  sky,  and  the 
rocky  ravine,  with  its  dusky  cedars  and  shining  river, 
was  lonelier  than  before.  At  the  inn  I  swallowed,  or 
tried  to  swallow,  a  glass  of  horrible  wine  with  my 
coachman  ;  after  which,  with  my  reconstructed  team, 
I  drove  back  to  Nimes  in  the  moonlight.  It  only 
added  a  more  solitary  whiteness  to  the  constant  sheen 
of  the  Provencal  landscape. 


XXVn.]  AIGUES-MORTES.  173 

XXVII. 

THE  weather  the  next  day  was  equally  fair,  so  that 
it  seemed  an  imprudence  not  to  make  sure  of  Aigues- 
Mortes.  Nimes  itself  could  wait ;  at  a  pinch,  I  could 
attend  to  Nimes  in  the  rain.  It  was  my  belief  that 
Aigues-Mortes  was  a  little  gem,  and  it  is  natural  to 
desire  that  gems  should  have  an  opportunity  to 
sparkle.  This  is  an  excursion  of  but  a  few  hours, 
and  there  is  a  little  friendly,  familiar,  dawdling  train 
that  will  convey  you,  in  time  for  a  noonday  breakfast, 
to  the  small  dead  town  where  the  blessed  Saint  Louis 
twice  embarked  for  the  crusades.  You  may  get  back 
to  Nimes  for  dinner ;  the  run  —  or  rather  the  walk, 
for  the  train  does  n't  run  —  is  of  about  an  hour.  I 
found  the  little  journey  charming,  and  looked  out  of 
the  carriage  window,  on  my  right,  at  the  distant  Ce- 
vennes,  covered  with  tones  of  amber  and  blue,  and, 
all  around,  at  vineyards  red  with  the  touch  of  Octo 
ber.  The  grapes  were  gone,  but  the  plants  had  a 
color  of  their  own.  Within  a  certain  distance  of 
Aigues-Mortes  they  give  place  to  wide  salt-marshes, 
traversed  by  two  canals ;  and  over  this  expanse  the 
train  rumbles  slowly  upon  a  narrow  causeway,  failing 
for  some  time,  though  you  know  you  are  near  the 
object  of  your  curiosity,  to  bring  you  to  sight  of 
anything  but  the  horizon.  Suddenly  it  appears,  the 
towered  and  embattled  mass,  lying  so  low  that  the 
crest  of  its  defences  seems  to  rise  straight  out  of 
the  ground  ;  and  it  is  not  till  the  train  stops,  close  be 
fore  them,  that  you  are  able  to  take  the  full  measure 
of  its  walls. 


174  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVII. 

Aigues-Mortes  stands  on  the  edge  of  a  wide  etang, 
or  shallow  inlet  of  the  sea,  the  further  side  of  which 
is  divided  by  a  narrow  band  of  coast  from  the  Gulf 
of  Lyons.  Next  after  Carcassonne,  to  which  it  forms 
an  admirable  pendant,  it  is  the  most  perfect  thing  of 
the  kind  in  France.  It  has  a  rival  in  the  person  of 
Avignon,  but  the  ramparts  of  Avignon  are  much  less 
effective.  Like  Carcassonne,  it  is  completely  sur 
rounded  with  its  old  fortifications ;  and  if  they  are  far 
simpler  in  character  (there  is  but  one  circle),  they  are 
quite  as  well  preserved.  The  moat  has  been  filled 
up,  and  the  site  of  the  town  might  be  figured  by 
a  billiard- table  without  pockets.  On  this  abso 
lute  level,  covered  with  coarse  grass,  Aigues-Mortes 
presents  quite  the  appearance  of  the  walled  town 
that  a  school-boy  draws  upon  his  slate,  or  that  we  see 
in  the  background  of  early  Flemish  pictures,  —  a 
simple  parallelogram,  of  a  contour  almost  absurdly 
bare,  broken  at  intervals  by  angular  towers  and 
square  holes.  Such,  literally  speaking,  is  this  de 
lightful  little  city,  which  needs  to  be  seen  to  tell  its 
full  story.  It  is  extraordinarily  pictorial,  and  if  it  is 
a  very  small  sister  of  Carcassonne,  it  has  at  least  the 
essential  features  of  the  family.  Indeed,  it  is  even 
more  like  an  image  and  less  like  a  reality  than 
Carcassonne;  for  by  position  and  prospect  it  seems 
even  more  detached  from  the  life  of  the  present  day. 
It  is  true  that  Aigues-Mortes  does  a  little  business ; 
it  sees  certain  bags  of  salt  piled  into  barges  which 
stand  in  a  canal  beside  it,  and  which  carry  their 
cargo  into  actual  places.  But  nothing  could  well  be 
more  drowsy  and  desultory  than  this  industry  as  I 
saw  it  practised,  with  the  aid  of  two  or  three  brown 


XXVII.]  AIGUES-M011TES.  175 

peasants  and  under  the  eye  of  a  solitary  douanier, 
who  strolled  on  the  little  quay  beneath  the  western 
wall  "  C'est  bien  plaisant,  c'est  bien  paisible,"  said 
this  worthy  man,  with  whom  I  had  some  conversa 
tion  ;  and  pleasant  and  peaceful  is  the  place  indeed, 
though  the  former  of  these  epithets  may  suggest  an 
element  of  gayety  in  which  Aigues-Mortes  is  defi 
cient.  The  sand,  the  salt,  the  dull  sea-view,  surround 
it  with  a  bright,  quiet  melancholy.  There  are  fifteen 
towers  and  nine  gates,  five  of  which  are  on  the  south 
ern  side,  overlooking  the  water.  I  walked  all  round 
the  place  three  times  (it  does  n't  take  long),  but 
lingered  most  under  the  southern  wall,  where  the 
afternoon  light  slept  in  the  dreamiest,  sweetest  way. 
I  sat  down  on  an  old  stone,  and  looked  away  to  the 
desolate  salt-marshes  and  the  still,  shining  surface  of 
the  etang ;  and,  as  I  did  so,  reflected  that  this  was 
a  queer  little  out-of-the-world  corner  to  have  been 
chosen,  in  the  great  dominions  of  either  monarch,  for 
that  pompous  interview  which  took  place,  in  1538, 
between  Francis  I.  and  Charles  V.  It  was  also  not 
easy  to  perceive  how  Louis  IX.,  when  in  1248  and 
1270  he  started  for  the  Holy  Land,  set  his  army 
afloat  in  such  very  undeveloped  channels.  An  hour 
later  I  purchased  in  the  town  a  little  pamphlet  by 
M.  Marius  Topiu,  who  undertakes  to  explain  this 
latter  anomaly,  and  to  show  that  there  is  water 
enough  in  the  port,  as  we  may  call  it  by  courtesy,  to 
have  sustained  a  fleet  of  crusaders.  I  was  unable 
to  trace  the  channel  that  he  points  out,  but  was  glad 
to  believe  that,  as  he  contends,  the  sea  has  not  re 
treated  from  the  town  since  the  thirteenth  century. 
It  was  comfortable  to  think  that  things  are  not  so 


176  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVLT. 

changed  as  that.  M.  Topin  indicates  that  the  other 
French  ports  of  the  Mediterranean  were  not  then  dis- 
ponibles,  and  that  Aigues-Mortes  was  the  most  eligible 
spot  for  an  embarkation. 

Behind  the  straight  walls  and  the  quiet  gates  the 
little  town  has  not  crumbled,  like  the  Cite  of  Carcas 
sonne.  It  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  alive ;  but  if  it  is 
dead  it  has  been  very  neatly  embalmed.  The  hand 
of  the  restorer  rests  on  it  constantly ;  but  this  artist 
has  not,  as  at  Carcassonne,  had  miracles  to  accomplish. 
The  interior  is  very  still  and  empty,  with  small 
stony,  whitewashed  streets,  tenanted  by  a  stray  dog, 
a  stray  cat,  a  stray  old  woman.  In  the  middle  is  a 
little  place,  with  two  or  three  cafes  decorated  by 
wide  awnings,  —  a  little  place  of  which  the  principal 
.feature  is  a  very  bad  bronze  statue  of  Saint  Louis  by 
Pradier.  It  is  almost  as  bad  as  the  breakfast  I  had 
at  the  inn  that  bears  the  name  of  that  pious  mon 
arch.  You  may  walk  round  the  enceinte  of  Aigues- 
Mortes,  both  outside  and  in ;  but  you  may  not,  as 
at  Carcassonne,  make  a  portion  of  this  circuit  on 
the  chemin  de  ronde,  the  little  projecting  footway 
attached  to  the  inner  face  of  the  battlements.  This 
footway,  wide  enough  only  for  a  single  pedestrian,  is 
in  the  best  order,  and  near  each  of  the  gates  a  flight 
of  steps  leads  up  to  it ;  but  a  locked  gate,  at  the  top 
of  the  steps,  makes  access  impossible,  or  at  least 
unlawful.  Aigues-Mortes,  however,  has  its  citadel, 
an  immense  tower,  larger  than  any  of  the  others,  a 
little  detached,  and  standing  at  the  northwest  an 
gle  of  the  town.  I  called  upon  the  casernicr,  —  the 
custodian  of  the  walls,  —  and  in  his  absence  I  was 
conducted  through  this  big  Tour  de  Constance  by  his 


XXVII.]  AIGUES-MORTES.  177 

wife,  a  very  mild,  meek  woman,  yellow  with  the 
traces  of  fever  and  ague,  —  a  scourge  which,  as  might 
be  expected  in  a  town  whose  name  denotes  "dead 
waters/'  enters  freely  at  the  nine  gates.  The  Tour 
de  Constance  is  of  extraordinary  girth  and  solidity, 
divided  into  three  superposed  circular  chambers,  with 
very  fine  vaults,  which  are  lighted  by  embrasures 
of  prodigious  depth,  converging  to  windows  little 
larger  than  loop-holes.  The  place  served  for  years  as 
a  prison  to  many  of  the  Protestants  ol  the  south 
whom  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  had  ex 
posed  to  atrocious  penalties,  and  the  annals  of  these 
dreadful  chambers  during  the  first  half  of  the  last 
century  were  written  in  tears  and  blood.  Some  of 
the  recorded  cases  of  long  confinement  there  make 
one  marvel  afresh  at  what  man  has  inflicted  and  en 
dured.  In  a  country  in  which  a  policy  of  extermina 
tion  was  to  be  put  into  practice  this  horrible  tower 
was  an  obvious  resource.  From  the  battlements  at 
the  top,  which  is  surmounted  by  an  old  disused  light 
house,  you  see  the  little  compact  rectangular  town, 
which  looks  hardly  bigger  than  a  garden-patch, 
mapped  out  beneath  you,  and  follow  the  plain  con 
figuration  of  its  defences.  You  take  possession  of  it, 
and  you  feel  that  you  will  remember  it  always. 


12 


178  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVIII. 


XXVIII. 

AFTER  this  I  was  free  to  look  about  me  at  Nimes, 
and  I  did  so  with  such  attention  as  the  place  appeared 
to  require.  At  the  risk  of  seeming  too  easily  and  too 
frequently  disappointed,  I  will  say  that  it  required 
rather  less  than  I  had  been  prepared  to  give.  It  is  a 
town  of  three  or  four  fine  features,  rather  than  a  town 
with,  as  I  may  say,  a  general  figure.  In  general, 
Nirnes  is  poor :  its  only  treasures  are  its  Eoman  re 
mains,  which  are  of  the  first  order.  The  new  French 
fashions  prevail  in  many  of  its  streets  ;  the  old  houses 
are  paltry,  and  the  good  houses  are  new  ;  while  beside 
my  hotel  rose  a  big  spick-and-span  church,  which 
had  the  oddest  air  of  having  been  intended  for 
Brooklyn  or  Cleveland.  It  is  true  that  this  church 
looked  out  on  a  square  completely  French,  —  a  square 
of  a  fine  modern  disposition,  flanked  on  one  side  by  a 
classical  palais  de  justice  embellished  with  trees  and 
parapets,  and  occupied  in  the  centre  with  a  group  of 
allegorical  statues,  such  as  one  encounters  only  in 
the  cities  of  France,  the  chief  of  these  being  a 
colossal  figure  by  Pradier,  representing  Nimes.  An 
English,  an  American,  town  which  should  have  such 
a  monument,  such  a  square,  as  this,  would  be  a  place 
of  great  pretensions ;  but  like  so  many  little  miles  de 
province  in  the  country  of  which  I  write,  Nimes  is 
easily  ornamental.  What  nobler  ornament  can  there 
be  than  the  Roman  baths  at  the  foot  of  Mont  Cava 
lier,  and  the  delightful  old  garden  that  surrounds 
them  ?  All  that  quarter  of  Nimes  has  every  reason 
to  be  proud  of  itself;  it  has  been  revealed  to  the 


XXVIII.]  NIMES.  179 

world  at  large  by   copious   photography.     A  clear, 
abundant  stream  gushes  from  the  foot  of  a  high  hill 
(covered  with  trees  and  laid  out  in  paths),  and  is  dis 
tributed  into  basins  which  sufficiently  refer  themselves 
to  the  period  that  gave  them  birth,  —  the  period  that 
has  left  its  stamp  on  that  pompous  Peyrou  which  we 
admired  at  Montpellier.     Here  are  the  same  terraces 
and  steps  and  balustrades,  and  a  system  of  water 
works  less  impressive,  perhaps,  but  very  ingenious 
and  charming.     The  whole  place  is  a  mixture  of  old 
Koine  and  of  the  French  eighteenth  century ;  for  the 
remains  of  the  antique  baths  are  in  a  measure  in 
corporated  in  the  modern  fountains.     In  a  corner  of 
this  umbrageous  precinct  stands  a  small  Eoman  ruin, 
which  is   known   as   a   temple   of  Diana,  but  was 
more  apparently  a  nymphceum,  and  appears  to  have 
had  a  graceful  connection  with  the  adjacent  baths. 
I  learn  from  Murray  that  this  little  temple,  of  the 
period  of  Augustus,  "  was  reduced  to  its  present  state 
of  ruin  in  1577  ;"  the  moment  at  which  the  towns 
people,  threatened  with  a  siege  by  the  troops  of  the 
crown,  partly  demolished  it,  lest  it  should  serve  as  a 
cover  to  the  enemy.     The  remains  are  very  fragmen 
tary,  but  they  serve  to  show  that  the  place  was  lovely. 
I  spent  half  an  hour  in  it  on  a  perfect  Sunday  morn 
ing  (it  is  enclosed  by  a  high  grille,  carefully  tended, 
and  has  a  warden  of  its  own),  and  with  the  help  of 
my  imagination  tried  to  reconstruct  a  little  the  aspect 
of  things  in  the  Gallo-Roman  days.     I  do  wrong,  per 
haps,  to  say  that  I  tried ;  from  a  flight  so  deliberate 
I  should  have  shrunk.     But  there  was  a  certain  con 
tagion  of  antiquity  in  the  air ;  and  among  the  ruins 
of  baths  and  temples,  in  the  very  spot  where  the 


180  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVIII. 

aqueduct  that  crosses  the  Garden  in  the  wondrous 
manner  I  had  seen  discharged  itself,  the  picture  of  a 
splendid  paganism  seemed  vaguely  to  glow.  Eoman 
baths,  —  Roman  baths ;  those  words  alone  were  a 
scene.  Everything  was  changed :  I  was  strolling  in 
a  jardin  franpais ;  the  bosky  slope  of  the  Mont 
Cavalier  (a  very  modest  mountain),  hanging  over  the 
place,  is  crowned  with  a  shapeless  tower,  which  is  as 
likely  to  be  of  mediaeval  as  of  antique  origin;  and 
yet,  as  I  leaned  on  the  parapet  of  one  of  the  foun 
tains,  where  a  flight  of  curved  steps  (a  hemicycle,  as 
the  French  say)  descended  into  a  basin  full  of  dark, 
cool  recesses,  where  the  slabs  of  the  Roman  founda 
tions  gleam  through  the  clear  green  water,  —  as  in 
this  attitude  I  surrendered  myself  to  contemplation 
and  reverie,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  touched  for  a 
moment  the  ancient  world.  Such  moments  are  il 
luminating,  and  the  light  of  this  one  mingles,  in  my 
memory,  with  the  dusky  greenness  of  the  Jardin  de 
la  Fontaine. 

The  fountain  proper  —  the  source  of  all  these  dis 
tributed  waters  —  is  the  prettiest  thing  in  the  world, 
a  reduced  copy  of  Vaucluse.  It  gushes  up  at  the 
foot  of  the  Mont  Cavalier,  at  a  point  where  that 
eminence  rises  with  a  certain  cliff-like  effect,  and, 
like  other  springs  in  the  same  circumstances,  appears 
to  issue  from  the  rock  with  a  sort  of  quivering  still 
ness.  I  trudged  up  the  Mont  Cavalier,  —  it  is  a 
matter  of  five  minutes,  —  and  having  committed 
this  cockneyism  enhanced  it  presently  by  another. 
I  ascended  the  stupid  Tour  Magne,  the  mysterious 
structure  I  mentioned  a  moment  ago.  The  only 
feature  of  this  dateless  tube,  except  the  inevitable 


XXVIII.]  NIMES.  181 

collection  of  photographs  to  which  you  are  introduced 
by  the  door-keeper,  is  the  view  you  enjoy  from  its 
summit.  This  view  is,  of  course,  remarkably  fine 
but  I  am  ashamed  to  say  I  have  not  the  smallest 
recollection  of  it ;  for  while  I  looked  into  the  brilliant 
spaces  of  the  air  I  seemed  still  to  see  only  what  I 
saw  in  the  depths  of  the  Eoman  baths, —  the  image, 
disastrously  confused  and  vague,  of  a  vanished  world. 
This  world,  however,  has  left  at  Nimes  a  far  more 
considerable  memento  than  a  few  old  stones  covered 
with  water-moss.  The  Eoman  arena  is  the  rival  of 
those  of  Verona  and  of  Aries  ;  at  a  respectful  distance 
it  emulates  the  Colosseum.  It  is  a  small  Colosseum, 
if  I  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  and  is  in  a  much 
better  preservation  than  the  great  circus  at  Eome. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  external  walls,  with 
their  arches,  pillars,  cornices.  I  must  add  that  one 
should  not  speak  of  preservation,  in  regard  to  the 
arena  at  Nimes,  without  speaking  also  of  repair. 
After  the  great  ruin  ceased  to  be  despoiled,  it  began 
to  be  protected,  and  most  of  its  wounds  have  been 
dressed  with  new  material.  These  matters  concern 
the  archaeologist ;  and  I  felt  here,  as  I  felt  afterwards 
at  Aries,  that  one  of  the  profane,  in  the  presence  of 
such  a  monument,  can  only  admire  and  hold  his 
tongue.  The  great  impression,  on  the  whole,  is  an 
'impression  of  wonder  that  so  much  should  have  sur 
vived.  What  remains  at  Nimes,  after  all  dilapidation 
is  estimated,  is  astounding.  I  spent  an  hour  in  the 
Arenes  on  that  same  sweet  Sunday  morning,  as  I 
came  back  from  the  Eoman  baths,  and  saw  that  the 
corridors,  the  vaults,  the  staircases,  the  external  cas 
ing,  are  still  virtually  there.  Many  of  these  parts  are 


182  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXVIII. 

wanting  in  the  Colosseum,  whose  sublimity  of  size, 
however,  can  afford  to  dispense  with  detail.  The 
seats  at  Nimes,  like  those  at  Verona,  have  been 
largely  renewed ;  not  that  this  mattered  much,  as  I 
lounged  on  the  cool  surface  of  one  of  them,  and  ad 
mired  the  mighty  concavity  of  the  place  and  the 
elliptical  sky-line,  broken  by  uneven  blocks  and 
forming  the  rim  of  the  monstrous  cup,  —  a  cup  that 
had  been  filled  with  horrors.  And  yet  I  made  my 
reflections ;  I  said  to  myself  that  though  a  Eoman 
arena  is  one  of  the  most  impressive  of  the  works  of 
man,  it  has  a  touch  of  that  same  stupidity  which  I 
ventured  to  discover  in  the  Pont  du  Gard.  It  is  bru 
tal  ;  it  is  monotonous  ;  it  is  not  at  all  exquisite.  The 
Arenes  at  Nimes  were  arranged  for  a  bull-fight, — 
a  form  of  recreation  that,  as  I  was  informed,  is  much 
dans  Us  habitudes  Nimoises,  and  very  common  through 
out  Provence,  where  (still  according  to  my  informa 
tion)  it  is  the  usual  pastime  of  a  Sunday  afternoon. 
At  Aries  and  Nimes  it  has  a  characteristic  setting, 
but  in  the  villages  the  patrons  of  the  game  make  a 
circle  of  carts  and  barrels,  on  which  the  spectators 
perch  themselves.  I  was  surprised  at  the  prevalence, 
in  mild  Provence,  of  the  Iberian  vice,  and  hardly 
know  whether  it  makes  the  custom  more  respectable 
that  at  Mnies  and  Aries  the  thing  is  shabbily  and 
imperfectly  done.  The  bulls  are  rarely  killed,  and 
indeed  often  are  bulls  only  in  the  Irish  sense  of  the 
term,  —  being  domestic  and  motherly  cows.  Such 
an  entertainment  of  course  does  not  supply  to  the 
arena  that  element  of  the  exquisite  which  I  spoke  of 
as  wanting.  The  exquisite  at  Nimes  is  mainly  rep 
resented  by  the  famous  Maison  Carree.  The  first 


XXVIII.]  N1MES.  183 

impression  you  receive  from  this  delicate  little  build 
ing,  as  you  stand  before  it,  is  that  you  have  already 
seen  it  many  times.  Photographs,  engravings,  models, 
medals,  have  placed  it  definitely  in  your  eye,  so  that 
from  the  sentiment  with  which  you  regard  it  curiosity 
and  surprise  are  almost  completely,  and  perhaps  de 
plorably,  absent.  Admiration  remains,  however, — 
admiration  of  a  familiar  and  even  slightly  patronizing 
kind.  The  Maison  Carre'e  does  not  overwhelm  you ; 
you  can  conceive  it.  It  is  not  one  of  the  great  sensa 
tions  of  antique  art ;  but  it  is  perfectly  felicitous,  and, 
in  spite  of  having  been  put  to  all  sorts  of  incongruous 
uses,  marvellously  preserved.  Its  slender  columns, 
its  delicate  proportions,  its  charming  compactness, 
seemed  to  bring  one  nearer  to  the  century  that  built 
it  than  the  great  superpositions  of  arenas  and  bridges, 
and  give  it  the  interest  that  vibrates  from  one  age  to 
another  when  the  note  of  taste  is  struck.  If  anything 
were  needed  to  make  this  little  toy-temple  a  happy 
production,  the  service  would  be  rendered  by  the 
second-rate  boulevard  that  conducts  to  it,  adorned 
with  inferior  cafes  and  tobacco-shops.  Here,  in  a 
respectable  recess,  surrounded  by  vulgar  habitations, 
and  with  the  theatre,  of  a  classic  pretension,  opposite, 
stands  the  small  "  square  house,"  so  called  because  it 
is  much  longer  than  it  is  broad.  I  saw  it  first  in  the 
evening,  in  the  vague  moonlight,  which  made  it  look 
as  if  it  were  cast  in  bronze.  Stendhal  says,  justly, 
that  it  has  the  shape  of  a  playing-card,  and  he  ex 
presses  his  admiration  for  it  by  the  singular  wish 
that  an  "  exact  copy  "  of  it  should  be  erected  in  Paris. 
He  even  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  in  the  year  1880 
this  tribute  will  have  been  rendered  to  its  charms ; 


184  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXIX. 

nothing  would  be  more  simple,  to  his  mind,  than  to 
"  have  "  in  that  city  "  le  Pantheon  de  Kome,  quelques 
temples  de  Grece."  Stendhal  found  it  amusing  to 
write  in  the  character  of  a  commis-voyageur,  and 
sometimes  it  occurs  to  his  reader  that  he  really  was 
one. 

XXIX. 

ON  my  way  from  Mmes  to  Aries,  I  spent  three 
hours  at  Tarascon ;  chiefly  for  the  love  of  Alphonse 
Daudet,  who  has  written  nothing  more  genial  than 
"Les  Aventures  Prodigieuses  de  Tartavin,"  and  the 
story  of  the  "  siege "  of  the  bright,  dead  little  town 
(a  mythic  siege  by  the  Prussians)  in  the  "  Contes  du 
Limdi."  In  the  introduction  which,  for  the  new 
edition  of  his  works,  he  has  lately  supplied  to  "  Tar- 
tarin,"  the  author  of  this  extravagant  but  kindly 
satire  gives  some  account  of  the  displeasure  with 
which  he  has  been  visited  by  the  ticklish  Tarascon- 
nais.  Daudet  relates  that  in  his  attempt  to  shed  ^a 
humorous  light  upon  some  of  the  more  erratic  phases 
of  the  Provengal  character,  he  selected  Tarascon  at  a 
venture;  not  because  the  temperament  of  its  natives 
is  more  vainglorious  than  that  of  their  neighbors,  or 
their  rebellion  against  the  "despotism  of  fact"  more 
marked,  but  simply  because  he  had  to  name  a  par 
ticular  Provencal  city.  Tartarin  is  a  hunter  of  lions 
and  charmer  of  women,  a  true  " produit  du  midi"-a.s 
Daudet  says,  who  has  the  most  fantastic  and  fabulous 
adventures.  He  is  a  minimized  Don  Quixote,  with 
much  less  dignity,  but  with  equal  good  faith ;  and  the 
story  of  his  exploits  is  a  little  masterpiece  of  the 


XXIX.]  TARASCON.  185 

light  comical.  The  Tarasconnais,  however,  declined  to 
take  the  joke,  and  opened  the  vials  of  their  wrath 
upon  the  mocking  child  of  Nimes,  who  would  have 
been  better  employed,  they  doubtless  thought,  in 
showing  up  the  infirmities  of  his  own  family.  I  am 
bound  to  add  that  when  I  passed  through  Tarascon 
they  did  not  appear  to  be  in  the  least  out  of  humor. 
Nothing  could  have  been  brighter,  softer,  more  sug 
gestive  of  amiable  indifference,  than  the  picture  it 
presented  to  my  mind.  It  lies  quietly  beside  the 
Rhone,  looking  across  at  Beaucaire,  which  seems  very 
distant  and  independent,  and  tacitly  consenting  to  let 
the  castle  of  the  good  King  Rene  of  Anjou,  which 
projects  very  boldly  into  the  river,  pass  for  its  most 
interesting  feature.  The  other  features  are,  primarily, 
a  sort  of  vivid  sleepiness  in  the  aspect  of  the  place, 
as  if  the  September  noon  (it  had  lingered  on  into 
October)  lasted  longer  there  than  elsewhere ;  certain 
low  arcades,  which  make  the  streets  look  gray  and 
exhibit  empty  vistas  ;  and  a  very  curious  and  beauti 
ful  walk  beside  the  Rhone,  denominated  the  Chaussee, 
—  a  long  and  narrow  causeway,  densely  shaded  by  two 
rows  of  magnificent  old  trees,  planted  in  its  embank 
ment,  and  rendered  doubly  effective,  at  the  moment 
I  passed  over  it,  by  a  little  train  of  collegians,  who 
had  been  taken  out  for  mild  exercise  by  a  pair  of 
young  priests.  Lastly,  one  may  say  that  a  striking 
element  of  Tarascon,  as  of  any  town  that  lies  on  the 
Rhone,  is  simply  the  Rhone  itself:  the  big  brown 
flood,  of  uncertain  temper,  which  has  never  taken 
time  to  forget  that  it  is  a  child  of  the  mountain  and 
the  glacier,  and  that  such  an  origin  carries  with  it 
great  privileges.  Later,  at  Avignon,  I  observed  it  in 


186  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXIX. 

the  exercise  of  these  privileges,  chief  among  which 
was  that  of  frightening  the  good  people  of  the  old 
papal  city  half  out  of  their  wits. 

The  chateau  of  King  Rene  serves  to-day  as  the 
prison  of  a  district,  and  the  traveller  who  wishes  to 
look  into  it  must  obtain  his  permission  at  the  Mairie 
of  Tarascon.  If  he  have  had  a  certain  experience  of 
French  manners,  his  application  will  be  accompanied 
with  the  forms  of  a  considerable  obsequiosity,  and 
in  this  case  his  request  will  be  granted  as  civilly  as 
it  has  been  made.  The  castle  has  more  of  the  air  of 
a  severely  feudal  fortress  than  I  should  suppose  the 
period  of  its  construction  (the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth 
century)  would  have  warranted ;  being  tremendously 
bare  and  perpendicular,  and  constructed  for  comfort 
only  in  the  sense  that  it  was  arranged  for  defence. 
It  is  a  square  and  simple  mass,  composed  of  small 
yellow  stones,  and  perched  on  a  pedestal  of  rock 
which  easily  commands  the  river.  The  building  has 
the  usual  circular  towers  at  the  corners,  and  a  heavy 
cornice  at  the  top,  and  immense  stretches  of  sun- 
scorched  wall,  relieved  at  wide  intervals  by  small 
windows,  heavily  cross-barred.  It  has,  above  all,  an 
extreme  steepness  of  aspect ;  I  cannot  express  it 
otherwise.  The  walls  are  as  sheer  and  inhospitable 
as  precipices.  The  castle  has  kept  its  large  moat, 
which  is  now  a  hollow  filled  with  wild  plants.  To 
this  tall  fortress  the  good  Rene  retired  in  the  middle 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  finding  it  apparently  the 
most  substantial  thing  left  him  in  a  dominion  which 
had  included  Naples  and  Sicily,  Lorraine  and  Anjou. 
He  had  been  a  much-tried  monarch  and  the  sport  of 
a  various  fortune,  fighting  half  his  life  for  thrones  he 


XXIX.]  TARASCON.  187 

did  n't  care  for,  and  exalted  only  to  be  quickly  cast 
down.  Provence  was  the  country  of  his  affection, 
and  the  memory  of  his  troubles  did  not  prevent  him 
from  holding  a  joyous  court  at  Tarascon  and  at  Aix. 
He  finished  the  castle  at  Tarascon,  which  had  been 
begun  earlier  in  the  century,  —  finished  it,  I  suppose, 
for  consistency's  sake,  in  the  manner  in  which  it  had 
originally  been  designed  rather  than  in  accordance 
with  the  artistic  tastes  that  formed  the  consolation  of 
his  old  age.  He  was  a  painter,  a  writer,  a  dramatist 
a  modern  dilettante,  addicted  to  private  theatricals. 
There  is  something  very  attractive  in  the  image  that 
he  has  imprinted  on  the  page  of  history.  He  was 
both  clever  and  kind,  and  many  reverses  and  much 
suffering  had  not  imbittered  him  nor  quenched  his 
faculty  of  enjoyment.  He  was  fond  of  his  sweet 
Provence,  and  his  sweet  Provence  has  been  grateful ; 
it  has  woven  a  light  tissue  of  legend  around  the 
memory  of  the  good  King  Kene*. 

I  strolled  over  his  dusky  habitation  —  it  must 
have  taken  all  his  good-humor  to  light  it  up  —  at 
the  heels  of  the  custodian,  who  showed  me  the  usual 
number  of  castle-properties  :  a  deep,  well-like  court ; 
a  collection  of  winding  staircases  and  vaulted  cham 
bers,  the  embrasures  of  whose  windows  and  the 
recesses  of  whose  doorways  reveal  a  tremendous 
thickness  of  wall.  These  things  constitute  the  gen 
eral  identity  of  old  castles  ;  and  when  one  has  wan 
dered  through  a  good  many,  with  due  discretion  of 
step  and  protrusion  of  head,  one  ceases  very  much 
to  distinguish  and  remember,  and  contents  one's  self 
with  consigning  them  to  the  honorable  limbo  of  the 
romantic.  I  must  add  that  this  reflection  did  not  in 


188  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXIX. 

the  least  deter  me  from  crossing  the  bridge  which 
connects  Tarascon  with  Beaucaire,  in  order  to  ex 
amine  the  old  fortress  whose  ruins  adorn  the  latter 
city.  It  stands  on  a  foundation  of  rock  much  higher 
than  that  of  Tarascon,  and  looks  over  with  a  melan 
choly  expression  at  its  better-conditioned  brother. 
Its  position  is  magnificent,  and  its  outline  very  gal 
lant.  I  was  well  rewarded  for  my  pilgrimage  ;  for  if 
the  castle  of  Beaucaire  is  only  a  fragment,  the  whole 
place,  with  its  position  and  its  views,  is  an  inefface 
able  picture.  It  was  the  stronghold  of  the  Mont- 
morencys,  and  its  last  tenant  was  that  rash  Duke 
Francois,  whom  Eichelieu,  seizing  every  occasion  to 
trample  on  a  great  noble,  caused  to  be  beheaded  at 
Toulouse,  where  we  saw,  in  the  Capitol,  the  butcher's 
knife  with  which  the  cardinal  pruned  the  crown  of 
France  of  its  thorns.  The  castle,  after  the  death  of 
this  victim,  was  virtually  demolished.  Its  site,  which 
Nature  to-day  has  taken  again  to  herself,  has  an  ex 
traordinary  charm.  The  mass  of  rock  that  it  formerly 
covered  rises  high  above  the  town,  and  is  as  pre 
cipitous  as  the  side  of  the  Rhone.  A  tall,  rusty  iron 
gate  admits  you  from  a  quiet  corner  of  Beaucaire  to 
a  wild  tangled  garden,  covering  the  side  of  the  hill,  — 
for  the  whole  place  forms  the  public  promenade  of 
the  townsfolk,  —  a  garden  without  flowers,  with  little 
steep,  rough  paths  that  wind  under  a  plantation 
of  small,  scrubby  stone-pines.  Above  this  is  the 
grassy  platform  of  the  castle,  enclosed  on  one  side 
only  (toward  the  river)  by  a  large  fragment  of  wall 
and  a  very  massive  dungeon.  There  are  benches 
placed  in  the  lee  of  the  wall,  and  others  on  the 
edge  of  the  platform,  where  one  may  enjoy  a  view, 


XXIX.]  TARASCON.  189 

beyond  the  river,  of  certain  peeled  and  scorched  undu 
lations.  A  sweet  desolation,  an  everlasting  peace, 
seemed  to  hang  in  the  air.  A  very  old  man  (a 
fragment,  like  the  castle  itself)  emerged  from  some 
crumbling  corner  to  do  me  the  honors,  —  a  very 
gentle,  obsequious,  tottering,  toothless,  grateful  old 
man.  He  beguiled  me  into  an  ascent  of  the  solitary 
tower,  from  which  you  may  look  down  on  the  big 
sallow  river  and  glance  at  diminished  Tarascon,  and 
the  barefaced,  bald-headed  hills  behind  it.  It  may 
appear  that  I  insist  too  much  upon  the  nudity  of 
the  Provencal  horizon, — too  much,  considering  that 
I  have  spoken  of  the  prospect  from  the  heights  of 
Beaucaire  as  lovely.  But  it  is  an  exquisite  bareness ; 
it  seems  to  exist  for  the  purpose  of  allowing  one  to 
follow  the  delicate  lines  of  the  hills,  and  touch  with 
the  eyes,  as  it  were,  the  smallest  inflections  of  the 
landscape.  It  makes  the  whole  thing  seem  wonder 
fully  bright  and  pure. 

Beaucaire  used  to  be  the  scene  of  a  famous  fair, 
the  great  fair  of  the  south  of  France.  It  has  gone 
the  way  of  most  fairs,  even  in  France,  where  these 
delightful  exhibitions  hold  their  own  much  better 
than  might  be  supposed.  It  is  still  held  in  the 
month  of  July ;  but  the  bourgeoises  of  Tarascon  send 
to  the  Magasin  du  Louvre  for  their  smart  dresses,  and 
the  principal  glory  of  the  scene  is  its  long  tradition. 
Even  now,  however,  it  ought  to  be  the  prettiest  of 
all  fairs,  for  it  takes  place  in  a  charming  wood  which 
lies  just  beneath  the  castle,  beside  the  Rhone.  The 
booths,  the  barracks,  the  platforms  of  the  mounte 
banks,  the  bright-colored  crowd,  diffused  through  this 
midsummer  shade,  and  spotted  here  and  there  with 


190  A  LITTLE  TOUR   IN   FRANCE.  [XXIX. 

the  rich  Provencal  sunshine  must  be  of  the  most 
pictorial  effect.      It  is  highly  probable,  too,  that  it 
offers  a  large  collection  of  pretty  faces;   for   even 
in  the  few  hours  that  I  spent   at   Tarascon   I   dis 
covered  symptoms  of  the  purity  of  feature  for  which 
the  women  of  the  pays  d?  Aries  are  renowned.     The 
Arlesian  head-dress  was  visible  in  the  streets  ;  and 
this  delightful  coiffure  is  so  associated  with  a  charm 
ing  facial   oval,  a  dark  mild  eye,  a  straight  Greek 
nose,  and  a  mouth  worthy  of  all  the  rest,  that  it  con 
veys  a  presumption  of  beauty  which  gives  the  wearer 
time  either  to  escape  or  to  please  you.     I  have  read 
somewhere,  however,  that  Tarascon  is  supposed  to 
produce  handsome  men,  as  Aries  is  known  to  deal  in 
handsome  women.     It  may  be  that  I  should  have 
found  the  Tarasconnais  very  fine  fellows,  if  I  had 
encountered    enough    specimens    to   justify  an   in 
duction.     But  there   were   very   few  males   in  the 
streets,  and  the  place  presented  no  appearance  of 
activity.     Here  and  there  the  black  coif  of  an  old 
woman  or  of  a  young  girl  was  framed  by  a  low  door 
way  ;  but  for  the  rest,  as  I  have  said,  Tarascon  was 
mostly  involved  in  a  siesta.     There  was  not  a  crea 
ture  in  the  little  church  of  Saint  Martha,  which  I 
made  a  point  of  visiting  before  I  returned  to  the 
station,  and  which,  with  its  fine  romanesque  side- 
portal  and  its  pointed  and  crocketed  gothic  spire,  is 
as  curious  as  it  need  be,  in  view  of  its  tradition.     It 
stands  in  a  quiet  corner  where  the  grass  grows  be 
tween  the  small  cobble-stones,  and  you  pass  beneath 
a  deep  archway  to  reach  it.     The  tradition  relates 
that  Saint  Martha  tamed  with  her  own  hands,  and 
attached  to  her  girdle,  a  dreadful  dragon,  who  was 


XXX.]  ARLES.  191 

known  as  the  Tarasque,  and  is  reported  to  have  given 
his  name  to  the  city  on  whose  site  (amid  the  rocks 
which  form  the  base  of  the  chateau)  he  had  his 
cavern.  The  dragon,  perhaps,  is  the  symbol  of  a 
ravening  paganism,  dispelled  by  the  eloquence  of  a 
sweet  evangelist.  The  bones  of  the  interesting  saint, 
at  all  events,  were  found,  in  the  eleventh  century,  in 
a  cave  beneath  the  spot  on  which  her  altar  now 
stands.  I  know  not  what  had  become  of  the  bones 
of  the  dragon. 

XXX. 

THERE  are  two  shabby  old  inns  at  Aries,  which 
compete  closely  for  your  custom.  I  mean  by  this 
that  if  you  elect  to  go  to  the  Hotel  du  Forum,  the 
Hotel  du  Nord,  which  is  placed  exactly  beside  it  (at 
a  right  angle)  watches  your  arrival  with  ill-concealed 
disapproval ;  and  if  you  take  the  chances  of  its  neigh 
bor,  the  Hotel  du  Forum  seems  to  glare  at  you  invid 
iously  from  all  its  windows  and  doors.  I  forget 
which  of  these  establishments  I  selected ;  whichever 
it  was,  I  wished  very  much  that  it  had  been  the 
other.  The  two  stand  together  on  the  Place  des 
Homines,  a  little  public  square  of  Aries,  which  some 
how  quite  misses  its  effect.  As  a  city,  indeed,  Aries 
quite  misses  its  effect  in  every  way ;  and  if  it  is  a 
charming  place,  as  I  think  it  is,  I  can  hardly  tell 
the  reason  why.  The  straight-nosed  Arlesiennes 
account  for  it  in  some  degree;  and  the  remainder 
may  be  charged  to  the  ruins  of  the  arena  and  the 
theatre.  Beyond  this,  I  remember  with  affection 
the  ill-proportioned  little  Place  des  Homines ;  not  at 


192  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXX. 

all  monumental,  and  given  over  to  puddles  and  to 
shabby  cafe's.     I  recall  with  tenderness  the  tortuous 
and  featureless  streets,  which  looked  like  the  streets 
of  a  village,  and  were  paved  with  villanous  little 
sharp  stones,  making  all  exercise  penitential.     Con 
secrated  by  association  is  even  a  tiresome  walk  that  I 
took  the  evening  I  arrived,  with  the  purpose  of  ob 
taining  a  view  of  the  Ehone.    I  had  been  to  Aries 
before,  years  ago,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  remem 
bered  finding  on  the  banks  of  the  stream  some  sort 
of  picture.      I  think  that  on  the  evening  of  which 
I  speak  there  was  a  watery  moon,  which  it  seemed 
to  me  would  light  up  the  past  as  well  as  the  present. 
But  I  found  no  picture,  and  I  scarcely  found  the 
Bhone  at  all.     I  lost  my  way,  and  there  was  not 
a  creature  in  the   streets  to  whom  I  could  appeal. 
Nothing  could  be  more  provincial  than  the  situation 
of  Aries  at  ten  o'clock  at  night.      At  last  I  arrived 
at  a  kind  of  embankment,  where  I  could  see  the  great 
mud -colored  stream  slipping  along  in  the  soundless 
darkness.     It  had  come  on  to  rain,  I  know  not  what 
had  happened  to  the  moon,  and  the  whole  place  was 
anything  but  gay.     It  was  not  what  I  had  looked  for ; 
what  I  had  looked  for  was  in  the  irrecoverable  past. 
I  groped  my  way  back  to  the  inn  over  the  infernal 
cailloux,  feeling  like  a  discomfited  Dogberry.     I  re 
member  now  that  this  hotel  was  the  one  (whichever 
that  may  be)  which  has  the  fragment  of  a  Gallo- 
Roman  portico  inserted  into  one  of  its  angles.     I 
had  chosen  it  for  the  sake  of  this  exceptional  orna 
ment.     It  was  damp  and  dark,  and  the  floors  felt 
gritty  to  the  feet ;  it  was  an  establishment  at  which 
the  dreadful  gras-doulle  might  have  appeared  at  the 


XXX.]  AKLES.  193 

table  d'hote,  as  it  had  done  at  Narbonne.  Never 
theless,  I  was  glad  to  get  back  to  it ;  and  neverthe 
less,  too,  —  and  this  is  the  moral  of  my  simple 
anecdote,  —  my  pointless  little  walk  (I  don't  speak  of 
the  pavement)  suffuses  itself,  as  I  look  back  upon  it, 
with  a  romantic  tone.  And  in  relation  to  the  inn, 
I  suppose  I  had  better  mention  that  I  am  well  aware 
of  the  inconsistency  of  a  person  who  dislikes  the 
modern  caravansary,  and  yet  grumbles  when  he  finds 
a  hotel  of  the  superannuated  sort  One  ought  to 
choose,  it  would  seem,  and  make  the  best  of  either 
alternative.  The  two  old  taverns  at  Aries  are  quite 
unimproved;  such  as  they  must  have  been  in  the 
infancy  of  the  modern  world,  when  Stendhal  passed 
that  way,  and  the  lumbering  diligence  deposited 
him  in  the  Place  des  Hommes,  such  in  every  de 
tail  they  are  to-day.  Vieilles  auberges  de  France,  one 
ought  to  enjoy  their  gritty  floors  and  greasy  window- 
panes.  Let  it  be  put  on  record,  therefore,  that  I  have 
been,  I  won't  say  less  comfortable,  but  at  least  less 
happy,  at  better  inns. 

To  be  really  historic,  I  should  have  mentioned 
that  before  going  to  look  for  the  Ehone  I  had  spent 
part  of  the  evening  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  little 
place,  and  that  I  indulged  in  this  recreation  for  two 
definite  reasons.  One  of  these  was  that  I  had  an  op 
portunity  of  conversing  at  a  cafe*  with  an  attractive 
young  Englishman,  whom  I  had  met  in  the  afternoon 
at  Tarascon,  and  more  remotely,  in  other  years,  in 
London ;  the  other  was  that  there  sat  enthroned  be 
hind  the  counter  a  splendid  mature  Arlesienne,  whom 
my  companion  and  I  agreed  that  it  was  a  rare  privi 
lege  to  contemplate.  There  is  no  rule  of  good  man- 

13 


194  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXX. 

ners  or  morals  which  makes  it  improper,  at  a  cafe,  to 
fix  one's  eyes  upon  the  dame  de  comptoir  ;  the  lady  is, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  a  part  of  your  consommcdion. 
We  were  therefore  free  to  admire  without  restriction 
the  handsomest  person  I  had  ever  seen  give  change 
for  a  five-franc  piece.  She  was  a  large  quiet  woman, 
who  would  never  see  forty  again;  of  an  intensely 
feminine  type,  yet  wonderfully  rich  and  robust,  and 
full  of  a  certain  physical  nobleness.  Though  she  was 
not  really  old,  she  was  antique,  and  she  was  very 
grave,  even  a  little  sad.  She  had  the  dignity  of  a 
Eoman  empress,  and  she  handled  coppers  as  if  they 
had  been  stamped  with  the  head  of  Caesar.  I  have 
seen  washerwomen  in  the  Trastevere  who  were  per 
haps  as  handsome  as  she  ;  but  even  the  head-dress  of 
the  Roman  contadina  contributes  less  to  the  dignity 
of  the  person  born  to  wear  it  than  the  sweet  and 
stately  Arlesian  cap,  which  sits  at  once  aloft  and  on 
the  back  of  the  head ;  which  is  accompanied  with  a 
wide  black  bow  covering  a  considerable  part  of  the 
crown  ;  and  which,  finally,  accommodates  itself  inde 
scribably  well  to  the  manner  in  which  the  tresses  of 
the  front  are  pushed  behind  the  ears. 

This  admirable  dispenser  of  lumps  of  sugar  has 
distracted  me  a  little ;  for  I  am  still  not  sufficiently 
historical.  Before  going  to  the  cafe  I  had  dined,  and 
before  dining  I  had  found  time  to  go  and  look  at  the 
arena.  Then  it  was  that  I  discovered  that  Aries 
has  no  general  physiognomy,  and,  except  the  de 
lightful  little  church  of  Saint  Trophimus,  no  architec 
ture,  and  that  the  rugosities  of  its  dirty  lanes  affect 
the  feet  like  knife-blades.  It  was  not  then,  on  the 
Other  hand,  that  I  saw  the  arena  best.  The  second 


XXX.]         AELES:  THE  THEATRE.  195 

day  of  my  stay  at  Aries  I  devoted  to  a  pilgrimage  to 
the  strange  old  hill  town  of  Les  Baux,  the  medieval 
Pompeii,  of  which  I  shall  give  myself  the  pleasure 
of  speaking.  The  evening  of  that  day,  however  (my 
friend  and  I  returned  in  time  for  a  late  dinner),  I 
wandered  among  the  Roman  remains  of  the  place  by 
the  light  of  a  magnificent  moon,  and  gathered  an 
impression  which  has  lost  little  of  its  silvery  glow. 
The  moon  of  the  evening  before  had  been  aqueous  and 
erratic ;  but  if  on  the  present  occasion  it  was  guilty 
of  any  irregularity,  the  worst  it  did  was  only  to  linger 
beyond  its  time  in  the  heavens,  in  order  to  let  us  look 
at  things  comfortably.  The  effect  was  admirable ;  it 
brought  back  the  impression  of  the  way,  in  Rome 
itself,  on  evenings  like  that,  the  moonshine  rests 
upon  broken  shafts  and  slabs  of  antique  pavement. 
As  we  sat  in  the  theatre,  looking  at  the  two  lone  col 
umns  that  survive  —  part  of  the  decoration  of  the 
back  of  the  stage — and  at  the  fragments  of  ruin  around 
them,  we  might  have  been  in  the  Roman  forum.  The 
arena  at  Aries,  with  its  great  magnitude,  is  less  com 
plete  than  that  of  Nimes ;  it  has  suffered  even  more 
the  assaults  of  time  and  of  the  children  of  time,  and 
it  has  been  less  repaired.  The  seats  are  almost 
wholly  wanting;  but  the  external  walls,  minus  the 
topmost  tier  of  arches,  are  massively,  ruggedly,  com 
plete  ;  and  the  vaulted  corridors  seem  as  solid  as  the 
day  they  were  built.  The  whole  thing  is  superbly 
vast,  and  as  monumental,  for  place  of  light  amuse 
ment  —  what  is  called  in  America  a  "  variety-show  " 
—  as  it  entered  only  into  the  Roman  mind  to  make 
such  establishments.  The  podium  is  much  higher 
than  at  Nimes,  and  many  of  the  great  white  slabs 


196  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXX. 

that  faced  it  have  been  recovered  and  put  into  their 
places.  The  proconsular  box  has  been  more  or  less 
reconstructed,  and  the  great  converging  passages  of 
approach  to  it  are  still  majestically  distinct ;  so  that, 
as  I  sat  there  in  the  moon-charmed  stillness,  leaning 
my  elbows  on  the  battered  parapet  of  the  ring,  it  was 
not  impossible  to  listen  to  the  murmurs  and  shudders, 
the  thick  voice  of  the  circus,  that  died  away  fifteen 
hundred  years  ago. 

The  theatre  has  a  voice  as  well,  but  it  lingers  on 
the  ear  of  time  with  a  different  music.  The  Eoman 
theatre  at  Aries  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  most  charm 
ing  and  touching  ruins  I  had  ever  beheld ;  I  took  a 
particular  fancy  to  it.  It  is  less  than  a  skeleton,  — 
.the  arena  may  be  called  a  skeleton;  for  it  consists 
only  of  half  a  dozen  bones.  The  traces  of  the  row 
of  columns  which  formed  the  scene  —  the  permanent 
back-scene — remain;  two  marble  pillars  —  I  just  men 
tioned  them  —  are  upright,  with  a  fragment  of  their 
entablature.  Before  them  is  the  vacant  space  which 
was  filled  by  the  stage,  with  the  line  of  the  prosce 
nium  distinct,  marked  by  a  deep  groove,  impressed 
upon  slabs  of  stone,  which  looks  as  if  the  bottom  of 
a  high  screen  had  been  intended  to  fit  into  it.  The 
semicircle  formed  by  the  seats  —  half  a  cup  —  rises 
opposite ;  some  of  the  rows  are  distinctly  marked. 
The  floor,  from  the  bottom  of  the  stage,  in  the 
shape  of  an  arc  of  which  the  chord  is  formed  by  the 
line  of  the  orchestra,  is  covered  by  slabs  of  colored 
marble  —  red,  yellow,  and  green  —  which,  though 
terribly  battered  and  cracked  to-day,  give  one  an  idea 
of  the  elegance  of  the  interior.  Everything  shows 
that  it  was  on  a  great  scale :  .the  large  sweep  of  its 


XXX.]          ARLES:  THE  THEATRE.  197 

enclosing  walls,  the  massive  corridors  that  passed  be 
hind  the  auditorium,  and  of  which  we  can  still  per 
fectly  take  the  measure.  The  way  in  which  every 
seat  commanded  the  stage  is  a  lesson  to  the  architects 
of  our  epoch,  as  also  the  immense  size  of  the  place 
is  a  proof  of  extraordinary  power  of  voice  on  the  part 
of  the  Koman  actors.  It  was  after  we  had  spent  half 
an  hour  in  the  moonshine  at  the  arena  that  we  came 
on  to  this  more  ghostly  and  more  exquisite  ruin. 
The  principal  entrance  was  locked,  but  we  effected  an 
easy  escalade,  scaled  a  low  parapet,  and  descended  into 
the  place  behind  the  scenes.  It  was  as  light  as  day, 
and  the  solitude  was  complete.  The  two  slim  col 
umns,  as  we  sat  on  the  broken  benches,  stood  there 
like  a  pair  of  silent  actors.  What  I  called  touching, 
just  now,  was  the  thought  that  here  the  human  voice, 
the  utterance  of  a  great  language,  had  been  supreme. 
The  air  was  full  of  intonations  and  cadences ;  not  of  the 
echo  of  smashing  blows,  of  riven  armor,  of  howling  vic 
tims  and  roaring  beasts.  The  spot  is,  in  short,  one  of  the 
sweetest  legacies  of  the  ancient  world ;  and  there  seems 
no  profanation  in  the  fact  that  by  day  it  is  open  to 
the  good  people  of  Aries,  who  use  it  to  pass,  by  no 
means,  in  great  numbers,  from  one  part  of  the  town 
to  the  other ;  treading  the  old  marble  floor,  and  brush 
ing,  if  need  be,  the  empty  benches.  This  familiarity 
does  not  kill  the  place  again  ;  it  makes  it,  on  the  con 
trary,  live  a  little,  —  makes  the  present  and  the  past 
touch  each  other. 


198  A  LITTLE  TOUE  IN  FRANCE. 


XXXI. 

THE  third  lion  of  Aries  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  ancient  world,  but  only  with  the  old  one.  The 
church  of  Saint  Trophimus,  whose  wonderful  roman- 
esque  porch  is  the  principal  ornament  of  the  princi 
pal  place,  —  a  place  otherwise  distinguished  by  the 
presence  of  a  slim  and  tapering  obelisk  in  the  middle, 
as  well  as  by  that  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  and  the 
museum  —  the  interesting  church  of  Saint  Trophimus 
swears  a  little,  as  the  French  say,  with  the  peculiar 
character  of  Aries.  It  is  very  remarkable,  but  I 
would  rather  it  were  in  another  place.  Aries  is 
delightfully  pagan,  and  Saint  Trophimus,  with  its 
apostolic  sculptures,  is  rather  a  false  note.  These 
sculptures  are  equally  remarkable  for  their  primitive 
vigor  and  for  the  perfect  preservation  in  which  they 
have  come  down  to  us.  The  deep  recess  of  a  round- 
arched  porch  of  the  twelfth  century  is  covered  with 
quaint  figures,  which  have  not  lost  a  nose  or  a  finger. 
An  angular,  Byzantine-looking  Christ  sits  in  a  dia 
mond-shaped  frame  at  the  summit  of  the  arch,  sur 
rounded  by  little  angels,  by  great  apostles,  by  winged 
beasts,  by  a  hundred  sacred  symbols  and  grotesque 
ornaments.  It  is  a  dense  embroidery  of  sculpture, 
black  with  time,  but  as  uninjured  as  if  it  had  been 
kept  under  glass.  One  good  mark  for  the  French  Kev- 
olution  !  Of  the  interior  of  the  church,  which  has  a 
nave  of  the  twelfth  century,  and  a  choir  three  hun 
dred  years  more  recent,  I  chiefly  remember  the  odd 
feature  that  the  romanesque  aisles  are  so  narrow  that 
you  literally  —  or  almost  —  squeeze  through  them. 


XXXI.]  ARLES:    THE  MUSEUM.  199 

You  do  so  with  some  eagerness,  for  your  natural  pur 
pose  is  to  pass  out  to  the  cloister.  This  cloister,  as 
distinguished  and  as  perfect  as  the  porch,  has  a  great 
deal  of  charm.  Its  four  sides,  which  are  not  of  the 
same  period  (the  earliest  and  best  are  of  the  twelfth 
century),  have  an  elaborate  arcade,  supported  on  deli 
cate  pairs  of  columns,  the  capitals  of  which  show  an 
extraordinary  variety  of  device  and  ornament.  At 
the  corners  of  the  quadrangle  these  columns  take  the 
form  of  curious  human  figures.  The  whole  thing  is 
a  gem  of  lightness  and  preservation,  and  is  often  citei, 
for  its  beauty ;  but  —  if  it  does  n't  sound  too  profane 
—  I  prefer,  especially  at  Aries,  the  ruins  of  the  Eo- 
man  theatre.  The  antique  element  is  too  precious  to 
be  mingled  with  anything  less  rare.  This  truth  was 
very  present  to  my  mind  during  a  ramble  of  a  couple 
of  hours  that  I  took  just  before  leaving  the  place; 
and  the  glowing  beauty  of  the  morning  gave  the  last 
touch  to  the  impression.  I  spent  half  an  hour  at  the 
Museum;  then  I  took  another  look  at  the  Eoman 
theatre ;  after  which  I  walked  a  little  out  of  the  town 
to  the  Aliscamps,  the  old  Elysian  Fields,  the  meagre 
remnant  of  the  old  pagan  place  of  sepulture,  which 
was  afterwards  used  by  the  Christians,  but  has  been 
for  ages  deserted,  and  now  consists  only  of  a  melan 
choly  avenue  of  cypresses,  lined  with  a  succession  of 
ancient  sarcophagi,  empty,  mossy,  and  mutilated.  An 
iron-foundry,  or  some  horrible  establishment  which 
is  conditioned  upon  tall  chimneys  and  a  noise  of 
hammering  and  banging,  has  been  established  near 
at  hand ;  but  the  cypresses  shut  it  out  well  enough, 
and  this  small  patch  of  Elysium  is  a  very  romantic 
corner. 


200  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXI. 

The  door  of  the  Museum  stands  ajar,  and  a  vigilant 
custodian,  with  the  usual  batch  of  photographs  on 
his  mind,  peeps  out  at  you  disapprovingly  while  you 
linger  opposite,  before  the  charming  portal  of  Saint 
Trophimus,  which  you  may  look  at  for  nothing. 
When  you  succumb  to  the  silent  influence  of  his  eye, 
and  go  over  to  visit  his  collection,  you  find  yourself 
in  a  desecrated  church,  in  which  a  variety  of  ancient 
objects,  disinterred  in  Arlesian  soil,  have  been  ar 
ranged  without  any  pomp.  The  best  of  these,  I  be 
lieve,  were  found  in  the  ruins  of  the  theatre.  Some  of 
the  most  curious  of  them  are  early  Christian  sarcoph 
agi,  exactly  on  the  pagan  model,  but  covered  with 
rude  yet  vigorously  wrought  images  of  the  apostles, 
and  with  illustrations  of  scriptural  history.  Beauty 
of  the  highest  kind,  either  of  conception  or  of  execu 
tion,  is  absent  from  most  of  the  Eoman  fragments, 
which  belong  to  the  taste  of  a  late  period  and  a  pro 
vincial  civilization.  But  a  gulf  divides  them  from 
the  bristling  little  imagery  of  the  Christian  sarcoph 
agi,  in  which,  at  the  same  time,  one  detects  a  vague 
emulation  of  the  rich  examples  by  which  their  authors 
were  surrounded.  There  is  a  certain  element  of  style 
in  all  the  pagan  things ;  there  is  not  a  hint  of  it  in 
the  early  Christian  relics,  among  which,  according  to 
M.  Joanne,  of  the  Guide,  are  to  be  found  more  fine 
sarcophagi  than  in  any  collection  but  that  of  St.  John 
Lateran.  In  two  or  three  of  the  Eoman  fragments 
there  is  a  noticeable  distinction ;  principally  in  a 
charming  bust  of  a  boy,  quite  perfect,  with  those  sa 
lient  eyes  that  one  sees  in  certain  antique  busts,  and 
to  which  the  absence  of  vision  in  the  marble  mask 
gives  a  look,  often  very  touching,  as  of  a  baffled  effort 


XXXII.]  LES   BAUX.  201 

to  see ;  also  in  the  head  of  a  woman,  found  in  the 
ruins  of  the  theatre,  who,  alas !  has  lost  her  nose,  and 
whose  noble,  simple  contour,  barring  this  deficiency, 
recalls  the  great  manner  of  the  Venus  of  Milo.  There 
are  various  rich  architectural  fragments  which  indi 
cate  that  that  edifice  was  a  very  splendid  affair.  This 
little  Museum  at  Aries,  in  short,  is  the  most  Eoman 
thing  I  know  of,  out  of  Rome. 


XXXII. 

I  FIND  that  I  declared  one  evening,  in  a  little  jour 
nal  I  was  keeping  at  that  time,  that  I  was  weary  of 
writing  (I  was  probably  very  sleepy),  but  that  it  was 
essential  I  should  make  some  note  of  my  visit  to  Les 
Baux.  I  must  have  gone  to  sleep  as  soon  as  I  had 
recorded  this  necessity,  for  I  search  my  small  diary 
in  vain  for  any  account  of  that  enchanting  spot.  I 
have  nothing  but  my  memory  to  consult,  —  a  memory 
which  is  fairly  good  in  regard  to  a  general  impression, 
but  is  terribly  infirm  in  the  matter  of  details  and 
items.  We  knew  in  advance,  my  companion  and  I, 
that  Les  Baux  was  a  pearl  of  picturesqueness ;  for 
had  we  not  read  as  much  in  the  handbook  of  Murray, 
who  has  the  testimony  of  an  English  nobleman  as  to 
its  attractions  ?  We  also  knew  that  it  lay  some  miles 
from  Aries,  on  the  crest  of  the  Alpilles,  the  craggy 
little  mountains  which,  as  I  stood  on  the  breezy  plat 
form  of  Beaucaire,  formed  to  my  eye  a  charming,  if 
somewhat  remote,  background  to  Tarascon;  this  as 
surance  having  been  given  us  by  the  landlady  of  the 
inn  at  Aries,  of  whom  we  hired  a  rather  lumbering 


202  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXII. 

conveyance.  The  weather  was  not  promising,  but  it 
proved  a  good  day  for  the  mediaeval  Pompeii ;  a  gray, 
melancholy,  moist,  but  rainless,  or  almost  rainless 
day,  with  nothing  in  the  sky  to  flout,  as  the  poet 
says,  the  dejected  and  pulverized  past.  The  drive 
itself  was  charming ;  for  there  is  an  inexhaustible 
sweetness  in  the  gray-green  landscape  of  Provence. 
It  is  never  absolutely  flat,  and  yet  is  never  really 
ambitious,  and  is  full  both  of  entertainment  and  re 
pose.  It  is  in  constant  undulation,  and  the  bareness 
of  the  soil  lends  itself  easily  to  outline  and  profile. 
When  I  say  the  bareness,  I  mean  the  absence  of 
woods  and  hedges.  It  blooms  with  heath  and  scented 
shrubs  and  stunted  olive ;  and  the  white  rock  shining 
through  the  scattered  herbage  has  a  brightness  which 
answers  to  the  brightness  of  the  sky.  Of  course  it 
needs  the  sunshine,  for  all  southern  countries  look  a 
little  false  under  the  ground  glass  of  incipient  bad 
weather.  This  was  the  case  on  the  day  of  my  pil 
grimage  to  Les  Baux.  Nevertheless,  I  was  as  glad 
to  keep  going  as  I  was  to  arrive ;  and  as  I  went  it 
seemed  to  me  that  true  happiness  would  consist  in 
wandering  through  such  a  land  on  foot,  on  September 
afternoons,  when  one  might  stretch  one's  self  on  the 
warm  ground  in  some  shady  hollow,  and  listen  to  the 
hum  of  bees  and  the  whistle  of  melancholy  shepherds  ; 
for  in  Provence  the  shepherds  whistle  to  their  flocks. 
I  saw  two  or  three  of  them,  in  the  course  of  this  drive 
to  Les  Baux,  meandering  about,  looking  behind,  and 
calling  upon  the  sheep  in  this  way  to  follow,  which 
the  sheep  always  did,  very  promptly,  with  ovine  una 
nimity.  Nothing  is  more  picturesque  than  to  see  a 
slow  shepherd  threading  his  way  down  one  of  the 


XXXIL]  LES  BAUX.  203 

winding  paths  on  a  hillside,  with  his  flock  close  be 
hind  him,  necessarily  expanded,  yet  keeping  just  at 
his  heels,  bending  and  twisting  as  it  goes,  and  look 
ing  rather  like  the  tail  of  a  dingy  comet. 

About  four  miles  from  Aries,  as  you  drive  north 
ward  toward  the  Alpilles,  of  which  Alphonse  Daudet 
has  spoken  so  often,  and,  as  he  might  say,  so  inti 
mately,   stand   on   a   hill    that   overlooks    the   road 
the   very  considerable  ruins  of  the  abbey  of  Mont- 
majour,  one  of  the  innumerable  remnants  of  a  feudal 
and  ecclesiastical  (as  well  as  an  architectural)  past 
that  one  encounters  in  the  South  of  France ;  remnants 
which,  it  must  be  confessed,  tend  to  introduce  a  cer 
tain  confusion  and  satiety  into  the  passive  mind  of 
the  tourist.    Montmajour,  however,  is  very  impressive 
and  interesting ;   the   only   trouble  with  it  is   that, 
unless  you  have  stopped  and  returned  to  Aries,  you 
see  it  in  memory  over  the  head  of  Les  Baux,  which 
is   a  much  more  absorbing  picture.     A  part  of  the 
mass  of  buildings  (the  monastery)  dates  only  from  the 
last  century  ;  and  the  stiff  architecture  of  that  period 
does  not  lend  itself  very  gracefully  to  desolation :  it 
looks  too  much  as  if  it  had  been  burnt  down  the  year 
before.     The  monastery  was  demolished  during  the 
Eevolution,  and  it    njures  a  little  the  effect  of  the 
very   much   more   ancient   fragments   that  are  con 
nected  with  it.     The  whole  place  is  on  a  great  scale ; 
it   was   a  rich  and  splendid  abbey.     The  church,  a 
vast   basilica   of  the   eleventh   century,  and   of  the 
noblest   proportions,  is   virtually  intact ;  I  mean  as 
regards  its  essentials,  for  the  details  have  completely 
vanished.     The  huge  solid  shell  is  full  of  expression ; 
it  looks   as  if  it  had   been   hollowed   out   by  the 


204  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXIL 

sincerity  of  early  faith,  and  it  opens  into  a  cloister  as 
impressive  as  itself.  Wherever  one  goes,  in  France, 
one  meets,  looking  backward  a  little,  the  spectre  of 
the  great  Eevolution ;  and  one  meets  it  always  in  the 
shape  of  the  destruction  of  something  beautiful  and 
precious.  To  make  us  forgive  it  at  all,  how  much  it 
must  also  have  destroyed  that  was  more  hateful  than 
itself !  Beneath  the  church  of  Montrnajour  is  a  most 
extraordinary  crypt,  almost  as  big  as  the  edifice 
above  it,  and  making  a  complete  subterranean  temple, 
surrounded  with  a  circular  gallery,  or  deambula- 
tory,  which  expands  at  intervals  into  five  square 
chapels.  There  are  other  things,  of  which  I  have  but 
a  confused  memory :  a  great  fortified  keep ;  a  queer 
little  primitive  chapel,  hollowed  out  of  the  rock, 
beneath  these  later  structures,  and  recommended  to 
the  visitor's  attention  as  the  confessional  of  Saint 
Trophimus,  who  shares  with  so  many  worthies  the 
glory  of  being  the  first  apostle  of  the  Gauls.  Then 
there  is  a  strange,  small  church,  of  the  dimmest 
antiquity,  standing  at  a  distance  from  the  other 
buildings.  I  remember  that  after  we  had  let  our 
selves  down  a  good  many  steepish  places  to  visit 
crypts  and  confessionals,  we  walked  across  a  field 
to  this  archaic  cruciform  edifice,  and  went  thence 
to  a  point  further  down  the  road,  where  our  carriage 
was  awaiting  us.  The  chapel  of  the  Holy  Cross,  as 
it  is  called,  is  classed  among  the  historic  monuments 
of  France ;  and  I  read  in  a  queer,  rambling,  ill- 
written  book  which  I  picked  up  at  Avignon,  and 
in  which  the  author,  M.  Louis  de  Laincel,  has  buried 
a  great  deal  of  curious  information  on  the  subject 
of  Provence,  under  a  style  inspiring  little  confi- 


XXXII.]  LES   BAUX.  205 

dence,  that  the  "  delicieuse  chapell  ede  Sainte-Croix  " 
is  a  "veritable  bijou  artistique."  He  speaks  of  "a 
piece  of  lace  in  stone,"  which  runs  from  one  end 
of  the  building  to  the  other,  but  of  which  I  am 
obliged  to  confess  that  I  have  no  recollection.  I 
retain,  however,  a  sufficiently  clear  impression  of  the 
little  superannuated  temple,  with  its  four  apses  and 
its  perceptible  odor  of  antiquity,  —  the  odor  of  the 
eleventh  century. 

The  ruins  of  Les  Baux  remain  quite  indistinguish 
able,  even  when  you  are  directly  beneath  them,  at 
the  foot  of  the  charming  little  Alpilles,  which  mass 
themselves  with  a  kind  of  delicate  ruggedness.  Eock 
and  ruin  have  been  so  welded  together  by  the  con 
fusions  of  time,  that  as  you  approach  it  from  behind 
—  that  is,  from  the  direction  of  Aries  —  the  place 
presents  simply  a  general  air  of  cragginess.  Nothing 
can  be  prettier  than  the  crags  of  Provence;  they 
are  beautifully  modelled,  as  painters  say,  and  they 
have  a  delightful  silvery  color.  The  road  winds 
round  the  foot  of  the  hills  on  the  top  of  which  Les 
Baux  is  planted,  and  passes  into  another  valley,  from 
which  the  approach  to  the  town  is  many  degrees  less 
precipitous,  and  may  be  comfortably  made  in  a  car 
riage.  Of  course  the  deeply  inquiring  traveller  will 
alight  as  promptly  as  possible ;  for  the  pleasure  of 
climbing  into  this  queerest  of  cities  on  foot  is  not  the 
least  part  of  the  entertainment  of  going  there.  Then 
you  appreciate  its  extraordinary  position,  its  pictu- 
resqueuess,  its  steepness,  its  desolation  and  decay.  It 
hangs  —  that  is,  what  remains  of  it  —  to  the  slanting 
summit  of  the  mountain.  Nothing  would  be  more 
natural  than  for  the  whole  place  to  roll  down  into 


206  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXII. 

the  valley.  A  part  of  it  has  done  so  —  for  it  is  not 
unjust  to  suppose  that  in  the  process  of  decay  the 
crumbled  particles  have  sought  the  lower  level; 
while  the  remainder  still  clings  to  its  magnificent 
perch. 

If  I  called  Les  Baux  a  city,  just  above,  it  was  not 
that  I  was  stretching  a  point  in  favor  of  the  small 
spot  which  to-day  contains  but  a  few  dozen  inhabi 
tants.  The  history  of  the  place  is  as  extraordinary 
as  its  situation.  It  was  not  only  a  city,  but  a  state ; 
not  only  a  state,  but  an  empire ;  and  on  the  crest  of 
its  little  mountain  called  itself  sovereign  of  a  ter 
ritory,  or  at  least  of  scattered  towns  and  counties, 
with  which  its  present  aspect  is  grotesquely  out  of 
relation.  The  lords  of  Les  Baux,  in  a  word,  were 
great  feudal  proprietors ;  and  there  was  a  time  during 
which  the  island  of  Sardinia,  to  say  nothing  of  places 
nearer  home,  such  as  Aries  and  Marseilles,  paid  them 
homage.  The  chronicle  of  this  old  Provencal  house 
has  been  written,  in  a  style  somewhat  unctuous  and 
flowery,  by  M.  Jules  Canonge.  I  purchased  the  little 
book  —  a  modest  pamphlet  —  at  the  establishment 
of  the  good  sisters,  just  beside  the  church,  in  one  of 
the  highest  parts  of  Les  Baux.  The  sisters  have  a 
school  for  the  hardy  little  Baussenques,  whom  I 
heard  piping  their  lessons,  while  I  waited  in  the  cold 
parloir  for  one  of  the  ladies  to  come  and  speak  to  me. 
Nothing  could  have  been  more  perfect  than  the  man 
ner  of  this  excellent  woman  when  she  arrived;  yet 
her  small  religious  house  seemed  a  very  out-of-the- 
way  corner  of  the  world.  It  was  spotlessly  neat, 
and  the  rooms  looked  as  if  they  had  lately  been  pa 
pered  and  painted :  in  this  respect,  at  the  mediaeval 


XXXII.]  LES   BAUX,  207 

Pompeii,  they  were  rather  a  discord.  They  were,  at 
any  rate,  the  newest,  freshest  thing  at  Les  Baux.  I 
remember  going  round  to  the  church,  after  I  had 
left  the  good  sisters,  and  to  a  little  quiet  terrace, 
which  stands  in  front  of  it,  ornamented  with  a  few 
small  trees  and  bordered  with  a  wall,  breast-high,  over 
which  you  look  down  steep  hillsides,  off  into  the  air 
and  all  about  the  neighboring  country.  I  remember 
saying  to  myself  that  this  little  terrace  was  one  of 
those  felicitous  nooks  which  the  tourist  of  taste  keeps 
in  his  mind  as  a  picture.  The  church  was  small  and 
brown  and  dark,  with  a  certain  rustic  richness.  All 
this,  however,  is  no  general  description  of  Les  Baux. 

I  am  unable  to  give  any  coherent  account  of  the 
place,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  a  mere  con 
fusion  of  ruin.  It  has  not  been  preserved  in  lava 
like  Pompeii,  and  its  streets  and  houses,  its  ramparts 
and  castle,  have  become  fragmentary,  not  through 
the  sudden  destruction,  but  through  the  gradual  with 
drawal,  of  a  population.  It  is  not  an  extinguished, 
but  a  deserted  city ;  more  deserted  far  than  even  Car 
cassonne  and  Aigues-Mortes,  where  I  found  so  much 
entertainment  in  the  grass-grown  element.  It  is  of 
very  small  extent,  and  even  in  the  days  of  its  great 
ness,  when  its  lords  entitled  themselves  counts  of 
Cephalonia  and  Neophantis,  kings  of  Aries  and  Vi- 
enne,  princes  of  Achaia,  and  emperors  of  Constanti 
nople,  —  even  at  this  flourishing  period,  when,  as  M. 
Jules  Canonge  remarks,  "  they  were  able  to  depress 
the  balance  in  which  the  fate  of  peoples  and  kings  is 
weighed,"  the  plucky  little  city  contained  at  the  most 
no  more  than  thirty-six  hundred  souls.  Yet  its  lords 
(who,  however,  as  I  have  said,  were  able  to  present 


208  A   LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXH. 

a  long  list  of  subject  towns,  most  of  them,  though  a 
few  are  renowned,  unknown  to  fame)  were  seneschals 
and  captains-general  of  Piedmont  and  Lombardy, 
grand  admirals  of  the  kingdom  of  Naples,  and  its 
ladies  were  sought  in  marriage  by  half  the  first 
princes  in  Europe.  A  considerable  part  of  the  little 
narrative  of  M.  Canonge  is  taken  up  with  the  great 
alliances  of  the  House  of  Baux,  whose  fortunes,  mat 
rimonial  and  other,  he  traces  from  the  eleventh  cen 
tury  down  to  the  sixteenth.  The  empty  shells  of 
a  considerable  number  of  old  houses,  many  of  which 
must  have  been  superb,  the  lines  of  certain  steep 
little  streets,  the  foundations  of  a  castle,  and  ever  so 
many  splendid  views,  are  all  that  remains  to-day  of 
these  great  titles.  To  such  a  list  I  may  add  a  dozen 
very  polite  and  sympathetic  people,  who  emerged  from 
the  interstices  of  the  desultory  little  town  to  gaze  at 
the  two  foreigners  who  had  driven  over  from  Aries, 
and  whose  horses  were  being  baited  at  the  modest 
inn.  The  resources  of  this  establishment  we  did  not 
venture  otherwise  to  test,  in  spite  of  the  seductive 
fact  that  the  sign  over  the  door  was  in  the  Provencal 
tongue.  This  little  group  included  the  baker,  a  rather 
melancholy  young  man,  in  high  boots  and  a  cloak, 
with  whom  and  his  companions  we  had  a  good  deal 
of  conversation.  The  Baussenques  of  to-day  struck 
me  as  a  very  mild  and  agreeable  race,  with  a  good 
deal  of  the  natural  amenity  which,  on  occasions  like 
this  one,  the  traveller,  who  is  waiting  for  his  horses 
to  be  put  in  or  his  dinner  to  be  prepared,  observes 
in  the  charming  people  who  lend  themselves  to  con 
versation  in  the  hill-towns  of  Tuscany.  The  spot 
where  our  entertainers  at  Les  Baux  congregated  was 


XXXII.]  LES  BAUX.  209 

naturally  the  most  inhabited  portion  of  the  town  ;  as 
I  say,  there  were  at  least  a  dozen  human  figures  with 
in  sight.  Presently  we  wandered  away  from  them, 
scaled  the  higher  places,  seated  ourselves  among  the 
ruins  of  the  castle,  and  looked  down  from  the  cliff 
overhanging  that  portion  of  the  road  which  I  have 
mentioned  as  approaching  Les  Baux  from  behind.  I 
was  unable  to  trace  the  configuration  of  the  castle  as 
plainly  as  the  writers  who  have  described  it  in  the 
guide-books,  and  I  am  ashamed  to  say  that  I  did  not 
even  perceive  the  three  great  figures  of  stone  (the 
three  Marys,  as  they  are  called ;  the  two  Marys  of 
Scripture,  with  Martha),  which  constitute  one  of 
the  curiosities  of  the  place,  and  of  which  M.  Jules 
Canonge  speaks  with  almost  hyperbolical  admiration. 
A  brisk  shower,  lasting  some  ten  minutes,  led  us  to 
take  refuge  in  a  cavity,  of  mysterious  origin,  where 
the  melancholy  baker  presently  discovered  us,  having 
had  the  bonne  pensee  of  coming  up  for  us  with  an 
umbrella  which  certainly  belonged,  in  former  ages,  to 
one  of  the  Stephanettes  or  Berangeres  commemorated 
by  M.  Canonge.  His  oven,  I  am  afraid,  was  cold  so 
long  as  our  visit  lasted.  When  the  rain  was  over  we 
wandered  down  to  the  little  disencumbered  space  be 
fore  the  inn,  through  a  small  labyrinth  of  obliterated 
things.  They  took  the  form  of  narrow,  precipitous 
streets,  bordered  by  empty  houses,  with  gaping  win 
dows  and  absent  doors,  through  which  we  had 
glimpses  of  sculptured  chimney-pieces  and  fragments 
of  stately  arch  and  vault.  Some  of  the  houses  are 
still  inhabited ;  but  most  of  them  are  open  to  the  air 
and  weather.  Some  of  them  have  completely  col 
lapsed;  others  present  to  the  street  a  front  which 

14 


210  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXII. 

enables  one  to  judge  of  the  physiognomy  of  Les  Baux 
in  the  days  of  its.  importance.  This  importance  had 
pretty  well  passed  away  in  the  early  part  of  the  six 
teenth  century,  when  the  place  ceased  to  be  an  inde 
pendent  principality.  It  became  —  by  bequest  of  one 
of  its  lords,  Bernardin  des  Baux,  a  great  captain  of 
his  time  —  part  of  the  appanage  of  the  kings  of  France, 
by  whom  it  was  placed  under  the  protection  of  Aries, 
which  had  formerly  occupied  with  regard  to  it  a  dif 
ferent  position.  I  know  not  whether  the  Arlesians 
neglected  their  trust ;  but  the  extinction  of  the  sturdy 
little  stronghold  is  too  complete  not  to  have  begun 
long  ago.  Its  memories  are  buried  under  its  pon 
derous  stones.  As  we  drove  away  from  it  in  the 
gloaming,  my  friend  and  I  agreed  that  the  two  or 
three  hours  we  had  spent  there  were  among  the 
happiest  impressions  of  a  pair  of  tourists  very  curious 
in  the  picturesque.  We  almost  forgot  that  we  were 
bound  to  regret  that  the  shortened  day  left  us  no 
time  to  drive  five  miles  further,  above  a  pass  in  the 
little  mountains  —  it  had  beckoned  to  us  in  the 
morning,  when  we  came  in  sight  of  it,  almost  irresist 
ibly —  to  see  the  Roman  arch  and  mausoleum  of 
Saint  Eemy.  To  compass  this  larger  excursion  (in 
cluding  the  visit  to  Les  Baux)  you  must  start  from 
Aries  very  early  in  the  morning ;  but  I  can  imagine 
no  more  delightful  day. 


XXXIII.]  AVIGNON.  211 


xxxm. 

^ 

I  HAD  been  twice  at  Avignon  before,  and  yet  I  was 
not  satisfied.  I  probably  am  satisfied  now ;  never 
theless,  I  enjoyed  my  third  visit.  I  shall  not  soon 
forget  the  first,  on  which  a  particular  emotion  set  in 
delible  stamp.  I  was  travelling  northward,  in  1870, 
after  four  months  spent,  for  the  first  time,  in  Italy. 
It  was  the  middle  of  January,  and  I  had  found 
myself,  unexpectedly,  forced  to  return  to  England 
for  the  rest  of  the  winter.  It  was  an  insufferable 
disappointment ;  I  was  wretched  and  broken-hearted. 
Italy  appeared  to  me  at  that  time  so  much  better 
than  anything  else  in  the  world,  that  to  rise  from 
table  in  the  middle  of  the  feast  was  a  prospect  of 
being  hungry  for  the  rest  of  my  days.  I  had  heard  a 
great  deal  of  praise  of  the  south  of  France ;  but  the 
south  of  France  was  a  poor  consolation.  In  this 
state  of  mind  I  arrived  at  Avignon,  which  under  a 
bright,  hard  winter  sun  was  tingling — fairly  spin 
ning  —  with  the  mistral.  I  find  in  my  journal  of 
the  other  day  a  reference  to  the  acuteness  of  my 
reluctance  in  January,  1870.  France,  after  Italy, 
appeared,  in  the  language  of  the  latter  country,  poco 
simpatica ;  and  I  thought  it  necessary,  for  reasons 
now  inconceivable,  to  read  the  "  Figaro,"  which  was 
filled  with  descriptions  of  the  horrible  Troppmann, 
the  murderer  of  the  famille  Kink.  Troppmann,  Kink, 
le  crime  de  Pantin,  —  the  very  names  that  figured  in 
this  episode  seemed  to  wave  me  back.  Had  I  aban- 
oned  the  sonorous  south  to  associate  with  vocables 
so  base  ? 


212  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXIIL 

It  was  very  cold,  the  other  day,  at  Avignon ;  for 
though  there  was  no  mistral,  it  was  raining  as  it 
rains  in  Provence,  and  the  dampness  had  a  terrible 
chill  in  it.  As  I  sat  by  my  fire,  late  at  night  —  for 
in  genial  Avignon,  in  October,  I  had  to  have  a  fire  — 
it  came  back  to  me  that  eleven  years  before  I  had  at 
that  same  hour  sat  by  a  fire  in  that  same  room,  and, 
writing  to  a  friend  to  whom  I  was  not  afraid  to 
appear  extravagant,  had  made  a  vow  that  at  some 
happier  period  of  the  future  I  would  avenge  myself 
on  the  ci-devant  city  of  the  Popes  by  taking  it  in 
a  contrary  sense.  I  suppose  that  I  redeemed  my 
vow  on  the  occasion  of  my  second  visit  better  than 
on  my  third ;  for  then  I  was  on  my  way  to  Italy,  and 
that  vengeance,  of  course,  was  complete.  The  only 
drawback  was  that  I  was  in  such  a  hurry  to  get 
to  Ventimiglia  (where  the  Italian  custom-house  was 
to  be  the  sign  of  my  triumph),  that  I  scarcely  took 
time  to  make  it  clear  to  myself  at  Avignon  that  this 
was  better  than  reading  the  "  Figaro."  I  hurried  on 
almost  too  fast  to  enjoy  the  consciousness  of  moving 
southward.  On  this  last  occasion  I  was  unfortu 
nately  destitute  of  that  happy  faith.  Avignon  was 
my  southernmost  limit;  after  which  I  was  to  turn 
round  and  proceed  back  to  England.  But  in  the  in 
terval  I  had  been  a  great  deal  in  Italy,  and  that  made 
all  the  difference. 

I  had  plenty  of  time  to  think  of  this,  for  the  rain 
kept  me  practically  housed  for  the  first  twenty-four 
hours.  It  had  been  raining  in  these  regions  for  a 
month,  and  people  had  begun  to  look  askance  at  the 
Ehone,  though  as  yet  the  volume  of  the  river  was 
not  exorbitant.  The  only  excursion  possible,  while 


XXXIII.]  AVIGNON.  213 

the  torrent  descended,  was  a  kind  of  horizontal  dive, 
accompanied  with  infinite  splashing,  to  the  little 
musee  of  the  town,  which  is  within  a  moderate  walk 
of  the  hotel.  I  had  a  memory  of  it  from  my  first 
visit ;  it  had  appeared  to  me  more  pictorial  than  its 
pictures.  I  found  that  recollection  had  nattered  it 
a  little,  and  that  it  is  neither  better  nor  worse  than 
most  provincial  museums.  It  has  the  usual  musty 
chill  in  the  air,  the  usual  grass-grown  fore-court,  ii* 
which  a  few  lumpish  Koman  fragments  are  disposed, 
the  usual  red  tiles  on  the  floor,  and  the  usual  speci 
mens  of  the  more  livid  schools  on  the  walls.  I  rang 
up  the  gardien,  who  arrived  with  a  bunch  of  keys, 
wiping  his  mouth  ;  he  unlocked  doors  for  me,  opened 
shutters,  and  while  (to  my  distress,  as  if  the  things 
had  been  worth  lingering  over)  he  shuffled  about  after 
me,  he  announced  the  names  of  the  pictures  before 
which  I  stopped,  in  a  voice  that  reverberated  through 
the  melancholy  halls,  and  seemed  to  make  the  'author 
ship  shameful  when  it  was  obscure,  and  grotesque  when 
it  pretended  to  be  great.  Then  there  were  intervals  of 
silence,  while  I  stared  absent-mindedly,  at  hap-hazard, 
at  some  indistinguishable  canvas,  and  the  only  sound 
was  the  downpour  of  the  rain  on  the  skylights.  The 
museum  of  Avignon  derives  a  certain  dignity  from  its 
Koman  fragments.  The  town  has  no  Eoman  monu 
ments  to  show;  in  this  respect,  beside  its  brilliant 
neighbors,  Aries  and  Nimes,  it  is  a  blank.  But  a 
great  many  small  objects  have  been  found  in  its  soil, 
—  pottery,  glass,  bronzes,  lamps,  vessels  and  orna 
ments  of  gold  and  silver.  The  glass  is  especially 
charming,  —  small  vessels  of  the  most  delicate  shape 
and  substance,  many  of  them  perfectly  preserved 


214  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXIIL 

These  diminutive,  intimate  things  bring  one  near 
to  the  old  Roman  life ;  they  seem  like  pearls  strung 
upon  the  slender  thread  that  swings  across  the  gulf 
of  time.  A  little  glass  cup  that  Roman  lips  have 
touched  says  more  to  us  than  the  great  vessel  of  an 
arena.  There  are  two  small  silver  casseroles,  with 
chiselled  handles,  in  the  museum  of  Avignon,  that 
struck  me  as  among  the  most  charming  survivals  of 
antiquity. 

I  did  wrong,  just  above,  to  speak  of  my  attack  on 
this  establishment  as  the  only  recreation  I  took  that 
first  wet  day ;  for  I  remember  a  terribly  moist  visit 
to  the  former  palace  of  the  Popes,  which  could  have 
taken  place  only  in  the  same  tempestuous  hours.  It 
is  true  that  I  scarcely  know  why  I  should  have  gone 
out  to  see  the  Papal  palace  in  the  rain,  for  I  had 
been  over  it  twice  before,  and  even  then  had  not 
found  the  interest  of  the  place  so  complete  as  it  ought 
to  be ;  the  fact,  nevertheless,  remains  that  this  last 
occasion  is  much  associated  with  an  umbrella,  which 
was  not  superfluous  even  in  some  of  the  chambers 
and  corridors  of  the  gigantic  pile.  It  had  already 
seemed  to  me  the  dreariest  of  all  historical  buildings, 
and  my  final  visit  confirmed  the  impression.  The 
place  is  as  intricate  as  it  is  vast,  and  as  desolate  as  it 
is  dirty.  The  imagination  has,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  to  make  more  than  the  effort  usual  in  such 
cases  to  restore  and  repeople  it.  The  fact,  indeed, 
is  simply  that  the  palace  has  been  so  incalculably 
abused  and  altered.  The  alterations  have  been  so 
numerous  that,  though  I  have  duly  conned  the  enu 
merations,  supplied  in  guide-books,  of  the  principal 
perversions,  I  do  not  pretend  to  carry  any  of  them  in 


XXXIII.]      AVIGNON:    THE  PALACE  OF  THE  POPES.    215 

my  head.  The  huge  bare  mass,  without  ornament, 
without  grace,  despoiled  of  its  battlements  and  de 
faced  with  sordid  modern  windows,  covering  the 
Kocher  des  Doms,  and  looking  down  over  the  Rhone 
and  the  broken  bridge  of  Saint-Be*nazet  (which  stops 
in  such  a  sketchable  manner  in  mid-stream),  and 
across  at  the  lonely  tower  of  Philippe  le  Bel  and  the 
ruined  wall  of  Villeneuve,  makes  at  a  distance,  in 
spite  of  its  poverty,  a  great  figure,  the  effect  of  which 
is  carried  out  by  the  tower  of  the  church  beside  it 
(crowned  though  the  latter  be,  in  a  top-heavy  fashion, 
with  an  immense  modern  image  of  the  Virgin)  and 
by  the  thick,  dark  foliage  of  the  garden  laid  out  on  a 
still  higher  portion  of  the  eminence.  This  garden  re 
calls,  faintly  and  a  trifle  perversely,  the  grounds  of 
the  Pincian  at  Eome.  I  know  not  whether  it  is  the 
shadow  of  the  Papal  name,  present  in  both  places, 
combined  with  a  vague  analogy  between  the  churches, 
—  which,  approached  in  each  case  by  a  flight  of  steps, 
seemed  to  defend  the  precinct,  —  but  each  time  I 
have  seen  the  Promenade  des  Doms  it  has  carried  my 
thoughts  to  the  wider  and  loftier  terrace  from  which 
you  look  away  at  the  Tiber  and  Saint  Peter's. 

As  you  stand  before  the  Papal  palace,  and  espe 
cially  as  you  enter  it,  you  are  struck  with  its  being  a 
very  dull  monument.  History  enough  was  enacted 
here  :  the  great  schism  lasted  from  1305  to  1370,  dur 
ing  which  seven  Popes,  all  Frenchmen,  carried  on  the 
court  of  Avignon  on  principles  that  have  not  com 
mended  themselves  to  the  esteem  of  posterity.  But 
history  has  been  whitewashed  away,  and  the  scandals 
of  that  period  have  mingled  with  the  dust  of  dilapi 
dations  and  repairs.  The  building  has  for  many  years 


216  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXIII. 

been  occupied  as  a  barrack  for  regiments  of  the 
line,  and  the  main  characteristics  of  a  barrack  —  an 
extreme  nudity  and  a  very  queer  smell  —  prevail 
throughout  its  endless  compartments.  Nothing  could 
have  been  more  cruelly  dismal  than  the  appearance  it 
presented  at  the  time  of  this  third  visit  of  mine.  A 
regiment,  changing  quarters,  had  departed  the  day 
before,  and  another  was  expected  to  arrive  (from  Al 
geria)  on  the  morrow.  The  place  had  been  left  in  the 
befouled  and  belittered  condition  which  marks  the 
passage  of  the  military  after  they  have  broken  camp, 
and  it  would  offer  but  a  melancholy  welcome  to  the 
regiment  that  was  about  to  take  possession.  Enor 
mous  windows  had  been  left  carelessly  open  all  over 
the  building,  and  the  rain  and  wind  were  beating 
into  empty  rooms  and  passages ;  making  draughts 
which  purified,  perhaps,  but  which  scarcely  cheered. 
For  an  arrival,  it  was  horrible.  A  handful  of  soldiers 
had  remained  behind.  In  one  of  the  big  vaulted 
rooms  several  of  them  were  lying  on  their  wretched 
beds,  in  the  dim  light,  in  the  cold,  in  the  damp,  with 
the  bleak,  bare  walls  before  them,  and  their  overcoats, 
spread  over  them,  pulled  up  to  their  noses.  I  pitied 
them  immensely,  though  they  may  have  felt  less 
wretched  than  they  looked.  I  thought  not  of  the 
old  profligacies  and  crimes,  not  of  the  funnel-shaped 
torture-chamber  (which,  after  exciting  the  shudder  of 
generations,  has  been  ascertained  now,  I  believe,  to 
have  been  a  mediaeval  bakehouse),  not  of  the  tower 
of  the  glacibre  and  the  horrors  perpetrated  here  in 
the  Eevolution,  but  of  the  military  burden  of  young 
France.  One  wonders  how  young  France  endures  it, 
and  one  is  forced  to  believe  that  the  French  conscript 


XXXIV.]  VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.  217 

has,  in  addition  to  his  notorious  good-humor,  greater 
toughness  than  is  commonly  supposed  by  those  who 
consider  only  the  more  relaxing  influences  of  French 
civilization.  I  hope  he  finds  occasional  compensa 
tion  for  such  moments  as  I  saw  those  damp  young 
peasants  passing  on  the  mattresses  of  their  hideous 
barrack,  without  anything  around  to  remind  them 
that  they  were  in  the*  most  civilized  of  countries. 
The  only  traces  of  former  splendor  now  visible  in 
the  Papal  pile  are  the  walls  and  vaults  of  two  small 
chapels,  painted  in  fresco,  so  battered  and  effaced  as 
to  be  scarcely  distinguishable,  by  Simone  Memmi. 
It  offers,  of  course,  a  peculiarly  good  field  for  restora 
tion,  and  I  believe  the  government  intend  to  take 
it  in  hand.  I  mention  this  fact  without  a  sigh ;  for 
they  cannot  well  make  it  less  interesting  than  it  is 
at  present. 

XXXIV. 

FORTUNATELY,  it  did  not  rain  every  day  (though  I 
believe  it  was  raining  everywhere  else  in  the  depart 
ment)  ;  otherwise  I  should  not  have  been  able  to  go 
to  Villeneuve  and  to  Vaucluse.  The  afternoon,  in 
deed,  was  lovely  when  I  walked  over  the  intermi 
nable  bridge  that  spans  the  two  arms  of  the  Rhone, 
divided  here  by  a  considerable  island,  and  directed 
my  course,  like  a  solitary  horseman  —  on  foot,  to 
the  lonely  tower  which  forms  one  of  the  outworks 
of  Villeneuve-les-Avignou.  The  picturesque,  half- 
deserted  little  town  lies  a  couple  of  miles  further 
up  the  river.  The  immense  round  towers  of  its  old 
citadel  and  the  long  stretches  of  ruined  wall  covering 


218  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXTV. 

the  slope  on  which  it  lies,  are  the  most  striking  fea 
tures  of  the  nearer  view,  as  you  look  from  Avignon 
across  the  Khone.  I  spent  a  couple  of  hours  in  visit 
ing  these  objects,  and  there  was  a  kind  of  pictorial 
sweetness  in  the  episode ;  but  I  have  not  many  de 
tails  to  relate.  The  isolated  tower  I  just  mentioned 
has  much  in  common  with  the  detached  donjon  of 
Montmajour,  which  I  had  looked  at  in  going  to  Les 
Baux,  and  to  which  I  paid  my  respects  in  speaking  of 
that  excursion.  Also  the  work  of  Philippe  le  Bel 
(built  in  1307),  it  is  amazingly  big  and  stubborn, 
and  formed  the  opposite  limit  of  the  broken  bridge, 
whose  first  arches  (on  the  side  of  Avignon)  alone  re 
main  to  give  a  measure  of  the  occasional  volume  of 
the  Ehone.  Half  an  hour's  walk  brought  me  to  Ville- 
neuve,  which  lies  away  from  the  river,  looking  like 
a  big  village,  half  depopulated,  and  occupied  for  the 
most  part  by  dogs  and  cats,  old  women  and  small 
children ;  these  last,  in  general,  remarkably  pretty, 
in  the  manner  of  the  children  of  Provence.  You 
pass  through  the  place,  which  seems  in  a  singular 
degree  vague  and  unconscious,  and  come  to  the 
rounded  hill  on  which  the  ruined  abbey  lifts  its 
yellow  walls,  —  the  Benedictine  abbey  of  Saint- Andre, 
at  once  a  church,  a  monastery,  and  a  fortress.  A 
large  part  of  the  crumbling  enceinte  disposes  itself 
over  the  hill ;  but  for  the  rest,  all  that  has  preserved 
any  traceable  cohesion  is  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  citadel.  The  defence  of  the  place  appears  to  have 
been  intrusted  largely  to  the  huge  round  towers  that 
flank  the  old  gate ;  one  of  which,  the  more  complete, 
the  ancient  warden  (having  first  inducted  me  into  his 
own  dusky  little  apartment,  and  presented  me  with 


XXXIV.]  VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.  219 

a  great  bunch  of  lavender)  enabled  me  to  examine 
in  detail.  I  would  almost  have  dispensed  with 
the  privilege,  for  I  think  I  have  already  mentioned 
that  an  acquaintance  with  many  feudal  interiors  has 
wrought  a  sad  confusion  in  my  mind.  The  image  of 
the  outside  always  remains  distinct ;  I  keep  it  apart 
from  other  images  of  the  same  sort ;  it  makes  a  pic 
ture  sufficiently  ineffaceable.  But  the  guard-rooms, 
winding  staircases,  loop-holes,  prisons,  repeat  them 
selves  and  intermingle ;  they  have  a  wearisome  fam 
ily  likeness.  There  are  always  black  passages  and 
corners,  and  walls  twenty  feet  thick ;  and  there  is 
always  some  high  place  to  climb  up  to  for  the  sake 
of  a  "  magnificent  "  view.  The  views,  too,  are  apt  to 
get  muddled.  These  dense  gate-towers  of  Philippe 
le  Bel  struck  me,  however,  as  peculiarly  wicked  and 
grim.  Their  capacity  is  of  the  largest,  arid  they 
contain  ever  so  many  devilish  little  dungeons,  lighted 
by  the  narrowest  slit  in  the  prodigious  wall,  where  it 
comes  over  one  with  a  good  deal  of  vividness  and 
still  more  horror  that  wretched  human  beings  ever 
lay  there  rotting  in  the  dark.  The  dungeons  of 
Villeneuve  made  a  particular  impression  on  me,  — 
greater  than  any,  except  those  of  Loches,  which  must 
surely  be  the  most  grewsome  in  Europe.  I  hasten  to 
add  that  every  dark  hole  at  Villeneuve  is  called  a 
dungeon  ;  and  I  believe  it  is  well  established  that  in 
this  manner,  in  almost  all  old  castles  and  towers,  the 
sensibilities  of  the  modern  tourist  are  unscrupulously 
played  upon.  There  were  plenty  of  black  holes  in 
the  Middle  Ages  that  were  not  dungeons,  but  house 
hold  receptacles  of  various  kinds ;  and  many  a  tear 
dropped  in  pity  for  the  groaning  captive  has  really 


220  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXIV. 

been  addressed  to  the  spirits  of  the  larder  and  the 
faggot-nook  For  all  this,  there  are  some  very  bad 
corners  in  the  towers  of  Villeneuve,  so  that  I  was 
not  wide  of  the  mark  when  I  began  to  think  again, 
as  I  had  often  thought  before,  of  the  stoutness  of 
the  human  composition  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the 
tranquillity  of  nerve  of  people  to  whom  the  groan 
ing  captive  and  the  blackness  of  a  "  living  tomb " 
were  familiar  ideas,  which  did  not  at  all  interfere 
with  their  happiness  or  their  sanity.  Our  modern 
nerves,  our  irritable  sympathies,  our  easy  discomforts 
and  fears,  make  one  think  (in  some  relations)  less 
respectfully  of  human  nature.  Unless,  indeed,  it  be 
true,  as  I  have  heard  it  maintained,  that  in  the  Mid 
dle  Ages  every  one  did  go  inad,  —  every  one  was 
mad.  The  theory  that  this  was  a  period  of  general 
insanity  is  not  altogether  indefensible. 

Within  the  old  walls  of  its  immense  abbey  the 
town  of  Villeneuve  has  built  itself  a  rough  faubourg  ; 
the  fragments  with  which  the  soil  was  covered  hav 
ing  been,  I  suppose,  a  quarry  of  material.  There  are 
no  streets ;  the  small,  shabby  houses,  almost  hovels, 
straggle  at  random  over  the  uneven  ground.  The 
only  important  feature  is  a  convent  of  cloistered  nuns, 
who  have  a  large  garden  (always  within  the  walls) 
behind  their  house,  and  whose  doleful  establishment 
you  look  down  into,  or  down  at  simply,  from  the  bat 
tlements  of  the  citadel.  One  or  two  of  the  nuns  were 
passing  in  and  out  of  the  house ;  they  wore  gray  robes, 
with  a  bright  red  cape.  I  thought  their  situation  most 
provincial.  I  came  away,  and  wandered  a  little  over 
the  base  of  the  hill,  outside  the  walls.  Small  white 
stones  cropped  through  the  grass,  over  which  low 


XXXIV.]  AVIGNON.  221 

olive-trees  were  scattered.  The  afternoon  had  a  yellow 
brightness.  I  sat  down  under  one  of  the  little  trees, 
on  the  grass, —  the  delicate  gray  branches  were  not 
much  above  my  head,  —  and  rested,  and  looked  at 
Avignon  across  the  Ehone.  It  was  very  soft,  very  still 
and  pleasant,  though  I  am  not  sure  it  was  all  I  once 
should  have  expected  of  that  combination  of  elements : 
an  old  city  wall  for  a  background,  a  canopy  of  olives, 
and,  for  a  couch,  the  soil  of  Provence. 

When  I  came  back  to  Avignon  the  twilight  was 
already  thick;  but  I  walked  up  to  the  Eocher  des 
Doms.  Here  I  again  had  the  benefit  of  that  amiable 
moon  which  had  already  lighted  up  for  me  so  many 
romantic  scenes.  She  was  full,  and  she  rose  over  the 
Ehone,  and  made  it  look  in  the  distance  like  a  silver 
serpent.  I  remember  saying  to  myself  at  this  mo 
ment,  that  it  would  be  a  beautiful  evening  to  walk 
round  the  walls  of  Avignon,  —  the  remarkable  walls, 
which  challenge  comparison  with  those  of  Carcas 
sonne  and  Aigues-Mortes,  and  which  it  was  my  duty, 
as  an  observer  of  the  picturesque,  to  examine  with 
some  attention.  Presenting  themselves  to  that  sil 
ver  sheen,  they  could  not  fail  to  be  impressive.  So, 
at  least,  I  said  to  myself;  but,  unfortunately,  I  did 
not  believe  what  I  said.  It  is  a  melancholy  fact  that 
the  walls  of  Avignon  had  never  impressed  me  at  all, 
and  I  had  never  taken  the  trouble  to  make  the  cir 
cuit.  They  are  continuous  and  complete,  but  for  some 
mysterious  reason  they  fail  of  their  effect.  This 
is  partly  because  they  are  very  low,  in  some  places 
almost  absurdly  so  ;  being  buried  in  new  accumula 
tions  of  soil,  and  by  the  filling  in  of  the  moat  up  to 
their  middle.  Then  they  have  been  too  well  tended ; 


222  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXT. 

they  not  only  look  at  present  very  new,  but  look  as 
if  they  had  never  been  old.  The  fact  that  their 
extent  is  very  much  greater  makes  them  more  of  a 
curiosity  than  those  of  Carcassonne ;  but  this  is  exactly, 
at  the  same  time,  what  is  fatal  to  their  pictorial  unity. 
With  their  thirty-seven  towers  and  seven  gates  they 
lose  themselves  too  much  to  make  a  picture  that  will 
compare  with  the  admirable  little  vignette  of  Car 
cassonne.  I  may  mention,  now  that  I  am  speaking 
of  the  general  mass  of  Avignon,  that  nothing  is  more 
curious  than  the  way  in  which,  viewed  from  a  dis 
tance,  it  is  all  reduced  to  nought  by  the  vast  bulk  of 
the  palace  of  the  Popes.  From  across  the  Ehone,  or 
from  the  train,  as  you  leave  the  place,  this  great  gray 
block  is  all  Avignon ;  it  seems  to  occupy  the  whole 
city,  extensive,  with  its .  shrunken  population,  as  the 
city  is. 


xxxv. 

IT  was  the  morning  after  this,  I  think  (a  certain 
Saturday),  that  when  I  came  out  of  the  Hotel  de 
1'Europe,  which  lies  in  a  shallow  concavity  just 
within  the  city  gate  that  opens  on  the  Ehone,  —  came 
out  to  look  at  the  sky  from  the  little  place  before  the 
inn,  and  see  how  the  weather  promised  for  the  obliga 
tory  excursion  to  Vaucluse,  —  I  found  the  whole  town 
in  a  terrible  taking.  I  say  the  whole  town  advisedly ; 
for  every  inhabitant  appeared  to  have  taken  up  a 
position  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  or  on  the  upper 
most  parts  of  the  promenade  of  the  Donis,  where  a 
view  of  its  course  was  to  be  obtained.  It  had  risen 


XXXV.]  VAUCLUSE.  223 

surprisingly  in  the  night,  and  the  good  people  of 
Avignon  had  reason  to  know  what  a  rise  of  the  Ehone 
might  signify.  The  town,  in  its  lower  portions,  is 
quite  at  the  mercy  of  the  swollen  waters  ;  and  it  was 
mentioned  to  me  that  in  1856  the  Hotel  de  1'Europe, 
in  its  convenient  hollow,  was  flooded  up  to  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  ceiling  of  the  dining-room,  where  the  long 
board  which  had  served  for  so  many  a  table  d'hote 
floated  disreputably,  with  its  legs  in  the  air.  On  the 
present  occasion  the  mountains  of  the  Ardeche,  where 
it  had  been  raining  for  a  month,  had  sent  down  tor 
rents  which,  all  that  fine  Friday  night,  by  the  light 
of  the  innocent-looking  moon,  poured  themselves  into 
the  Ehone  and  its  tributary,  the  Durance.  The  river 
was  enormous,  and  continued  to  rise;  and  the  sight 
was  beautiful  and  horrible.  The  water  in  many 
places  was  already  at  the  base  of  the  city  walls ;  the 
quay,  with  its  parapet  just  emerging,  being  already 
covered.  The  country,  seen  from  the  Plateau  des 
Doms,  resembled  a  vast  lake,  with  protrusions  of  trees, 
houses,  bridges,  gates.  The  people  looked  at  it  in 
silence,  as  I  had  seen  people  before  —  on  the  occasion 
of  a  rise  of  the  Arno,  at  Pisa — appear  to  consider 
the  prospects  of  an  inundation.  "  II  monte  ;  il  monte 
toujours,"  —  there  was  not  much  said  but  that.  It 
was  a  general  holiday,  and  there  was  an  air  of  wishing 
to  profit,  for  sociability's  sake,  by  any  interruption  of 
the  commonplace  (the  popular  mind  likes  "  a  change," 
and  the  element  of  change  mitigates  the  sense  of  dis 
aster)  ;  but  the  affair  was  not  otherwise  a  holiday. 
Suspense  and  anxiety  were  in  the  air,  and  it  never  is 
pleasant  to  be  reminded  of  the  helplessness  of  man. 
In  the  presence  of  a  loosened  river,  with  its  ravaging, 


224  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXV. 

unconquerable  volume,  this  impression  is  as  strong  as 
possible ;  and  as  I  looked  at  the  deluge  which  threat 
ened  to  make  an  island  of  the  Papal  palace,  I  per 
ceived  that  the  scourge  of  water  is  greater  than  the 
scourge  of  fire.  A  blaze  may  be  quenched,  but  where 
could  the  flame  be  kindled  that  would  arrest  the 
quadrupled  Ehone  ?  For  the  population  of  Avignon 
a  good  deal  was  at  stake,  and  I  am  almost  ashamed 
to  confess  that  in  the  midst  of  the  public  alarm  I 
considered  the  situation  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
little  projects  of  a  sentimental  tourist.  Would  the 
prospective  inundation  interfere  with  my  visit  to  Vau- 
cluse,  or  make  it  imprudent  to  linger  twenty-four 
hours  longer  at  Avignon  ?  I  must  add  that  the  tour 
ist  was  not  perhaps,  after  all,  so  sentimental.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  pilgrimage  to  the  shrine  of  Petrarch  as 
obligatory,  and  that  was,  in  fact,  the  light  in  which 
it  presented  itself  to  me ;  all  the  more  that  I  had  been 
twice  at  Avignon  without  undertaking  it.  This  is 
why  I  was  vexed  at  the  Rhone  —  if  vexed  I  was  — 
for  representing  as  impracticable  an  excursion  which 
I  cared  nothing  about.  How  little  I  cared  was  mani 
fest  from  my  inaction  on  former  occasions.  I  had 
a  prejudice  against  Vaucluse,  against  Petrarch,  even 
against  the  incomparable  Laura.  I  was  sure  that  the 
place  was  cockneyfied  and  threadbare,  and  I  had  never 
been  able  to  take  an  interest  in  the  poet  and  the  lady. 
I  was  sure  that  I  had  known  many  women  as  charm 
ing  and  as  handsome  as  she,  about  whom  much  less 
noise  had  been  made ;  and  I  was  convinced  that  her 
singer  was  factitious  and  literary,  and  that  there  are 
half  a  dozen  stanzas  in  Wordsworth  that  speak  more 
to  the  soul  than  the  whole  collection  of  his  fioriture. 


XXXV.]  VAUCLUSE.  225 

This  was  the  crude  state  of  mind  in  which  I  deter 
mined  to  go,  at  any  risk,  to  Vaucluse.  Now  that  I 
think  it  over,  I  seem  to  remember  that  I  had  hoped, 
after  all,  that  the  submersion  of  the  roads  would  for 
bid  it.  Since  morning  the  clouds  had  gathered  again, 
and  by  noon  they  were  so  heavy  that  there  was  every 
prospect  of  a  torrent.  It  appeared  absurd  to  choose 
such  a  time  as  this  to  visit  a  fountain,  —  a  fountain 
which  would  be  indistinguishable  in  the  general  cat 
aract.  Nevertheless  I  took  a  vow,  that  if  at  noon  the 
rain  should  not  have  begun  to  descend  upon  Avignon 
I  would  repair  to  the  head-spring  of  the  Sorgues. 
When  the  critical  moment  arrived,  the  clouds  were 
hanging  over  Avignon  like  distended  water-bags, 
which  only  needed  a  prick  to  empty  themselves.  The 
prick  was  not  given,  however;  all  nature  was  too 
much  occupied  in  following  the  aberrations  of  the 
Rhone  to  think  of  playing  tricks  elsewhere.  Accord 
ingly,  I  started  for  the  station  in  a  spirit  which,  for 
a  tourist  who  sometimes  had  prided  himself  on  his 
unfailing  supply  of  sentiment,  was  shockingly  per 
functory. 

"  For  tasks  in  hours  of  insight  willed 
May  be  in  hours  of  gloom  fulfilled." 

I  remembered  these  lines  of  Matthew  Arnold  (writ 
ten,  apparently,  in  an  hour  of  gloom),  and  carried  out 
the  idea,  as  I  went,  by  hoping  that  with  the  return 
of  insight  I  should  be  glad  to  have  seen  Yaucluse. 
Light  has  descended  upon  me  since  then,  and  I  de 
clare  that  the  excursion  is  in  every  way  to  be  recom 
mended.  The  place  makes  a  great  impression,  quite 
apart  from  Petrarch  and  Laura. 

15 


226  A  LITTLE   TOUE  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXV. 

There  was  no  rain ;  there  was  only,  all  the  afternoon, 
a  mild,  moist  wind,  and  a  sky  magnificently  black, 
which  made  a  repoussoir  for  the  paler  cliffs  of  the 
fountain.  The  road,  by  train,  crosses  a  flat,  expres 
sionless  country,  toward  the  range  of  arid  hills  which 
lie  to  the  east  of  Avignon,  and  which  spring  (says 
Murray)  from  the  mass  of  the  Mont-Ventoux.  At 
Isle-sur-Sorgues,  at  the  end  of  about  an  hour,  the 
foreground  becomes  much  more  animated  and  the  dis 
tance  much  more  (or  perhaps  I  should  say  much  less) 
actual.  I  descended  from  the  train,  and  ascended  to 
the  top  of  an  omnibus  which  was  to  convey  me  into 
the  recesses  of  the  hills.  It  had  not  been  among  my 
previsions  that  I  should  be  indebted  to  a  vehicle  of 
that  kind  for  an  opportunity  to  commune  with  the 
spirit  of  Petrarch  ;  and  I  had  to  borrow  what  consola 
tion  I  could  from  the  fact  that  at  least  I  had  the 
omnibus  to  myself.  I  was  the  only  passenger ;  every 
one  else  was  at  Avignon,  watching  the  Ehone.  I  lost 
no  time  in  perceiving  that  I  could  not  have  come  to 
Vaucluse  at  a  better  moment.  The  Sorgues  was  al 
most  as  full  as  the  Khone,  and  of  a  color  much  more 
romantic.  Bushing  along  its  narrowed  channel  un 
der  an  avenue  of  fine  platancs  (it  is  confined  between 
solid  little  embankments  of  stone),  with  the  good- 
wives  of  the  village,  on  the  brink,  washing  their 
linen  in  its  contemptuous  flood,  it  gave  promise  of 
high  entertainment  further  on. 

The  drive  to  Vaucluse  is  of  about  three  quarters  of 
an  hour ;  and  though  the  river,  as  I  say,  was  promis 
ing,  the  big  pale  hills,  as  the  road  winds  into  them, 
did  not  look  as  if  their  slopes  of  stone  and  shrub  were 
a  nestling-place  for  superior  scenery.  It  is  a  part  of 


XXXV.]  VAUCLUSE.  227 

the  merit  of  Vaucluse,  indeed,  that  it  is  as  much  as  pos 
sible  a  surprise.  The  place  has  a  right  to  its  name, 
for  the  valley  appears  impenetrable  until  you  get 
fairly  into  it.  One  perverse  twist  follows  another, 
until  the  omnibus  suddenly  deposits  you  in  front  of 
the  "  cabinet "  of  Petrarch.  After  that  you  have  only 
to  walk  along  the  left  bank  of  the  river.  The  cabinet 
of  Petrarch  is  to-day  a  hideous  little  cafe,  bedizened, 
like  a  signboard,  with  extracts  from  the  ingenious 
"  Bime."  The  poet  and  his  lady  are,  of  course,  the  stock 
in  trade  of  the  little  village,  which  has  had  for  sev 
eral  generations  the  privilege  of  attracting  young 
couples  engaged  in  their  wedding-tour,  and  other 
votaries  of  the  tender  passion.  The  place  has  long 
been  familiar,  on  festal  Sundays,  to  the  swains  of 
Avignon  and  their  attendant  nymphs.  The  little  fish 
of  the  Sorgues  are  much  esteemed,  and,  eaten  on  the 
spot,  they  constitute,  for  the  children  of  the  once  Pa 
pal  city,  the  classic  suburban  dinner.  Yaucluse  has 
been  turned  to  account,  however,  not  only  by  senti 
ment,  but  by  industry ;  the  banks  of  the  stream  being 
disfigured  by  a  pair  of  hideous  mills  for  the  manufacture 
of  paper  and  of  wool.  In  an  enterprising  and  eco 
nomical  age  the  water-power  of  the  Sorgues  was  too 
obvious  a  motive ;  and  I  must  say  that,  as  the  torrent 
rushed  past  them,  the  wheels  of  the  dirty  little  fac 
tories  appeared  to  turn  merrily  enough.  The  foot 
path  on  the  left  bank,  of  which  I  just  spoke,  carries 
one,  fortunately,  quite  out  of  sight  "of  them,  and  out  of 
sound  as  well,  inasmuch  as  on  the  day  of  my  visit 
the  stream  itself,  which  was  in  tremendous  force, 
tended  more  and  more,  as  one  approached  the  fountain, 
to  fill  the  valley  with  its  own  echoes.  Its  color  was 


228  A  LITTLE  TOUK  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXV* 

magnificent,  and  the  whole  spectacle  more  like  a  cor 
ner  of  Switzerland  than  a  nook  in  Provence.  The 
protrusions  of  the  mountain  shut  it  in,  and  you  pene 
trate  to  the  bottom  of  the  recess  which  they  form. 
The  Sorgues  rushes  and  rushes;  it  is  almost  like 
Niagara  after  the  jump  of  the  cataract.  There  are 
dreadful  little  booths  beside  the  path,  for  the  sale 
of  photographs  and  immortelles,  —  I  don't  know  what 
one  is  to  do  with  the  immortelles,  —  where  you  are  of 
fered  a  brush  dipped  in  tar  to  write  your  name  withal 
on  the  rocks.  Thousands  of  vulgar  persons,  of  both 
sexes,  and  exclusively,  it  appeared,  of  the  French  na 
tionality,  had  availed  themselves  of  this  implement;  for 
every  square  inch  of  accessible  stone  was  scored  over 
with  some  human  appellation.  It  is  not  only  we  in 
America,  therefore,  who  besmirch  our  scenery ;  the 
practice  exists,  in  a  more  organized  form  (like  every 
thing  else  in  France),  in  the  country  of  good  taste. 
You  leave  the  little  booths  and  stalls  behind ;  but  the 
bescribbled  crag,  bristling  with  human  vanity,  keeps 
you  company  even  when  you  stand  face  to  face  with 
the  fountain.  This  happens  when  you  find  yourself 
at  the  foot  of  the  enormous  straight  cliff  out  of  which 
the  river  gushes.  It  rears  itself  to  an  extraordinary 
height,  —  a  huge  forehead  of  bare  stone,  —  looking  as 
if  it  were  the  half  of  a  tremendous  mound,  split  open 
by  volcanic  action.  The  little  valley,  seeing  it  there, 
at  a  bend,  stops  suddenly,  and  receives  in  its  arms 
the  magical  spring.  I  call  it  magical  on  account  of 
the  mysterious  manner  in  which  it  comes  into  the 
world,  with  the  huge  shoulder  of  the  mountain  rising 
over  it,  as  if  to  protect  the  secret.  From  under  the 
mountain  it  silently  rises,  without  visible  movement, 


XXXV.]  VAUCLUSE.  229 

filling  a  small  natural  basin  with  the  stillest  blue 
water.  The  contrast  between  the  stillness  of  this 
basin  and  the  agitation  of  the  water  directly  after  it 
has  overflowed,  constitutes  half  the  charm  of  Vau- 
cluse.  The  violence  of  the  stream  when  once  it  has 
been  set  loose  on  the  rocks  is  as  fascinating  and  in 
describable  as  that  of  other  cataracts ;  and  the  rocks 
in  the  bed  of  the  Sorgues  have  been  arranged  by  a 
master-hand.  The  setting  of  the  phenomenon  struck 
ine  as  so  simple  and  so  fine  —  the  vast  sad  cliff,  cov 
ered  with  the  afternoon  light,  still  and  solid  forever, 
while  the  liquid  element  rages  and  roars  at  its  base 
—  that  I  had  no  difficulty  in  understanding  the  ce 
lebrity  of  Vaucluse.  I  understood  it,  but  I  will  not 
say  that  I  understood  Petrarch.  He  must  have  been 
very  self-supporting,  and  Madonna  Laura  must  indeed 
have  been  much  to  him. 

The  aridity  of  the  hills  that  shut  in  the  valley  is 
complete,  and  the  whole  impression  is  best  conveyed 
by  that  very  expressive  French  epithet  morne.  There 
are  the  very  fragmentary  ruins  of  a  castle  (of  one 
of  the  bishops  of  Cavaillon)  on  a  high  spur  of  the 
mountain,  above  the  river;  and  there  is  another 
remnant  of  a  feudal  habitation  on  one  of  the  more 
accessible  ledges.  Having  half  an  hour  to  spare 
before  my  omnibus  was  to  leave  (I  must  beg  the 
reader's  pardon  for  this  atrociously  false  note;  call 
the  vehicle  a  diligence,  and  for  some  undiscoverable 
reason  the  offence  is  minimized),  I  clambered  up  to 
this  latter  spot,  and  sat  among  the  rocks  in  the 
company  of  a  few  stunted  olives.  The  Sorgues,  be 
neath  me,  reaching  the  plain,  flung  itself  crookedly 
across  the  meadows,  like  an  unrolled  blue  ribbon. 


230  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXVI. 

I  tried  to  think  of  the  amant  de  Laure,  for  literature's 
sake;  but  I  had  no  great  success,  and  the  most  I 
could  do  was  to  say  to  myself  that  I  must  try  again. 
Several  months  have  elapsed  since  then,  and  I  am 
ashamed  to  confess  that  the  trial  has  not  yet  come 
off.  The  only  very  definite  conviction  I  arrived  at 
was  that  Vaucluse  is  indeed  cockneyfied,  but  that  I 
should  have  been  a  fool,  all  the  same,  not  to  come. 


XXXVI. 

I  MOUNTED  into  my  diligence  at  the  door  of  the 
Hotel  de  Pe*trarque  et  de  Laure,  and  we  made  our 
way  back  to  Isle-sur-Sorgues  in  the  fading  light. 
This  village,  where  at  six  o'clock  every  one  appeared 
to  have  gone  to  bed,  was  fairly  darkened  by  its  high, 
dense  plane-trees,  under  which  the  rushing  river,  on 
a  level  with  its  parapets,  looked  unnaturally,  almost 
wickedly  blue.  It  was  a  glimpse  which  has  left  a 
picture  in  my  mind :  the  little  closed  houses,  the 
place  empty  and  soundless  in  the  autumn  dusk  but 
for  the  noise  of  waters,  and  in  the  middle,  amid  the 
blackness  of  the  shade,  the  gleam  of  the  swift,  strange 
tide.  At  the  station  every  one  was  talking  of  the 
inundation  being  in  many  places  an  accomplished 
fact,  and,  in  particular,  of  the  condition  of  the 
Durance  at  some  point  that  I  have  forgotten.  At 
Avignon,  an  hour  later,  I  found  the  water  in  some  of 
the  streets.  The  sky  cleared  in  the  evening,  the  moon 
lighted  up  the  submerged  suburbs,  and  the  popu 
lation  again  collected  in  the  high  places  to  enjoy  the 


XXXVI.]  OKANGE.  231 

spectacle.     It  exhibited  a  certain  sameness,  however, 
and  by  nine  o'clock  there  was  considerable  animation 
in  the   Place  Crillon,  where  there  is  nothing  to  be 
seen  but  the  front  of  the  theatre  and  of  several  cafes 
—  in  addition,  indeed,  to  a  statue  of  this  celebrated 
brave,  whose  valor  redeemed  some  of  the  numerous 
military   disasters  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XV.     The 
next  morning  the  lower  quarters  of  the  town  were  in 
a  pitiful  state ;  the  situation  seemed  to  me  odious. 
To  express  my  disapproval  of  it,  I  lost  no  time  in 
taking  the   train  for  Orange,  which,  with   its  other 
attractions,  had  the   merit  of  not  being  seated   on 
the  Rhone.     It  was  my  destiny  to  move  northward  • 
but  even  if  I  had  been  at  liberty  to  follow  a  less 
unnatural  course  I  should  not  then  have  undertaken 
it,  inasmuch  as  the  railway  between   Avignon   and 
Marseilles  was   credibly   reported   to  be  (in  places) 
under  water.     This  was  the  case  with  almost  every 
thing  but   the   line   itself,  on  the   way  to  Orange. 
The   day   proved   splendid,  and  its   brilliancy  only 
lighted  up  the  desolation.     Farmhouses  and  cottages 
were   up   to   their   middle   in  the  yellow  liquidity; 
haystacks  looked  like  dull  little  islands ;  windows 
and  doors  gaped  open,  without  faces ;  and  interrup 
tion  and  flight  were  represented  in  the  scene.    It  was 
brought  home   to   me   that   the  populations  rurales 
have  many  different  ways  of  suffering,  and  my  heart 
glowed  with  a  grateful  sense  of  cockneyism.     It  was 
under  the  influence  of  this  emotion  that  I  alighted 
at  Orange,  to  visit  a   collection   of  eminently  civil 
monuments. 

The   collection   consists   of  but   two   objects,  but 
these  objects  are  so  fine  that  I  will  let  the  word  pass. 


232  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXVI. 

One  of  them  is  a  triumphal  arch,  supposedly  of  the 
period  of  Marcus  Aurelius ;  the  other  is  a  fragment, 
magnificent  in  its  ruin,  of  a  Eoman  theatre.  But  for 
these  fine  Roman  remains  and  for  its  name,  Orange  is 
a  perfectly  featureless  little  town,  without  the  Ehone 

—  which,  as  I  have  mentioned,  is  several  miles  dis 
tant —  to  help  it  to  a  physiognomy.     It  seems  one 
of  the  oddest  things  that  this  obscure  French  borough 

—  obscure,  I  mean,  in  our  modern  era,  for  the  Gallo-, 
Roman   Arausio   must  have  been,  judging  it  by  its 
arches  and  theatre,  a   place  of  some  importance  — 
should  have  given  its  name  to  the  heirs  apparent  of 
the  throne  of  Holland,  and  been  borne  by  a  king  of 
England  who  had  sovereign  rights  over  it.     During 
the  Middle  Ages  it  formed  part  of  an  independent 
principality;  but   in   1531    it  fell,   by  the  marriage 
of  one  of  its  princesses,  who  had  inherited  dt,  into  the 
family  of  Nassau.     I  read  in  my  indispensable  Mur 
ray  that  it  was  made  over  to  France  by  the  treaty 
of  Utrecht.     The   arch  of   triumph,  which  stands  a 
little  way  out  of  the  town,  is  rather  a  pretty  than 
an  imposing  vestige  of  the  Romans.    If  it  had  greater 
purity  of  style,  one  might  say  of  it  that  it  belonged 
to    the  same   family  of  monuments   as   the   Maison 
Carree  at  Nimes.    It  has  three  passages,  —  the  middle 
much  higher  than  the  others,  —  and  a  very  elevated 
attic.     The  vaults  of  the  passages  are  richly  sculp 
tured,   and   the   whole   monument    is   covered  with 
friezes  and  military  trophies.    This  sculpture  is  rather 
mixed;  much  of  it  is  broken  and  defaced,  and  the 
rest  seemed  to  me  ugly,  though  its  workmanship  is 
praised.     The   arch   is   at   once  well   preserved  and 
much  injured.     Its   general   mass   is   there,  and  as 


XXXVI.]  OEANGE.  233 

Eoman  monuments  go  it  is  remarkably  perfect ;  but 
it  has  suffered,  in  patches,  from  the  extremity  of 
restoration.  It  is  not,  on  the  whole,  of  absorbing 
interest.  It  has  a  charm,  nevertheless,  which  comes 
partly  from  its  soft,  bright  yellow  color,  partly  from  a 
certain  elegance  of  shape,  of  expression  ;  and  on  that 
well-washed  Sunday  morning,  with  its  brilliant  tone, 
surrounded  by  its  circle  of  thin  poplars,  with  the 
green  country  lying  beyond  it  and  a  low  blue  hori 
zon  showing  through  its  empty  portals,  it  made,  very 
sufficiently,  a  picture  that  hangs  itself  to  one  of  the 
lateral  hooks  of  the  memory.  I  can  take  down  the 
modest  composition,  and  place  it  before  me  as  I 
write.  I  see  the  shallow,  shining  puddles  in  the 
hard,  fair  French  road ;  the  pale  blue  sky,  diluted  by 
days  of  rain ;  the  disgarnished  autumnal  fields ;  the 
mild  sparkle  of  the  low  horizon ;  the  solitary  figure 
in  sabots,  with  a  bundle  under  its  arm,  advancing 
along  the  chaussee;  and  in  the  middle  I  see  the 
little  ochre-colored  monument,  which,  in  spite  of  its 
antiquity,  looks  bright  and  gay,  as  everything  must 
look  in  France  of  a  fresh  Sunday  morning. 

It  is  true  that  this  was  not  exactly  the  appearance 
of  the  Roman  theatre,  which  lies  on  the  other  side  of 
the  town ;  a  fact  that  did  not  prevent  me  from  mak 
ing  my  way  to  it  in  less  than  five  minutes,  through  a 
succession  of  little  streets  concerning  which  I  have  no 
observations  to  record.  None  of  the  Eoman  remains 
in  the  south  of  France  are  more  impressive  than  this 
stupendous  fragment.  An  enormous  mound  rises 
above  the  place,  which  was  formerly  occupied  —  I 
quote  from  Murray  —  first  by  a  citadel  of  the  Ro 
mans,  then  by  a  castle  of  the  princes  of  Nassau,  razed 


234  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXVI. 

by  Louis  XIV.  Facing  this  hill  a  mighty  wall  erects 
itself,  thirty-six  metres  high,  and  composed  of  mas 
sive  blocks  of  dark  brown  stone,  simply  laid  one  on 
the  other ;  the  whole  naked,  rugged  surface  of  which 
suggests  a  natural  cliff  (say  of  the  Vaucluse  order) 
rather  than  an  effort  of  human,  or  even  of  Eoman 
labor.  It  is  the  biggest  thing  at  Orange,  —  it  is 
bigger  than  all  Orange  put  together,  —  and  its  per 
manent  massiveness  makes  light  of  the  shrunken 
city.  The  face  it  presents  to  the  town  —  the  top 
of  it  garnished  with  two  rows  of  brackets,  perforated 
with  holes  to  receive  the  staves  of  the  velarium 
—  bears  the  traces  of  more  than  one  tier  of  orna 
mental  arches;  though  how  these  flat  arches  were 
applied,  or  incrusted,  upon  the  wall,  I  do  not  pro 
fess  to  explain.  You  pass  through  a  diminutive 
postern  —  which  seems  in  proportion  about  as  high 
as  the  entrance  of  a  rabbit-hutch  —  into  the  lodge  of 
the  custodian,  who  introduces  you  to  the  interior  of 
the  theatre.  Here  the  mass  of  the  hill  affronts  you, 
which  the  ingenious  Eomans  treated  simply  as  the 
material  of  their  auditorium.  They  inserted  their 
stone  seats,  in  a  semicircle,  in  the  slope  of  the  hill, 
and  planted  their  colossal  wall  opposite  to  it.  This 
wall,  from  the  inside,  is,  if  possible,  even  more  impos 
ing.  It  formed  the  back  of  the  stage,  the  permanent 
scene,  and  its  enormous  face  was  coated  with  marble. 
It  contains  three  doors,  the  middle  one  being  the 
highest,  and  having  above  it,  far  aloft,  a  deep  niche, 
apparently  intended  for  an  imperial  statue.  A  few 
of  the  benches  remain  on  the  hillside,  which,  how 
ever,  is  mainly  a  confusion  of  fragments.  There  is 
part  of  a  corridor  built  into  the  hill,  high  up,  and 


XXXVI.]  OKANGE.  235 

on  the  crest  are  tlie  remnants  of  the  demolished 
castle.  The  whole  place  is  a  kind  of  wilderness  of 
ruin;  there  are  scarcely  any  details;  the  great  fea 
ture  is  the  overtopping  wall.  This  wall  being  the 
back  of  the  scene,  the  space  left  between  it  and  the 
chord  of  the  semicircle  (of  the  auditorium)  which 
formed  the  proscenium  is  rather  less  than  one  would 
have  supposed.  In  other  words,  the  stage  was  very 
shallow,  and  appears  to  have  been  arranged  for  a 
number  of  performers  standing  in  a  line,  like  a 
company  of  soldiers.  There  stands  the  silent  skele 
ton,  however,  as  impressive  by  what  it  leaves  you 
to  guess  and  wonder  about  as  by  what  it  tells  you. 
It  has  not  the  sweetness,  the  softness  of  melancholy, 
of  the  theatre  at  Aries ;  but  it  is  more  extraordi 
nary,  and  one  can  imagine  only  tremendous  tragedies 
being  enacted  there,  — 

"  Presenting  Thebes'  or  Pelops'  line." 

At  either  end  of  the  stage,  coming  forward,  is  an 
immense  wing,  —  immense  in  height,  I  mean,  as  it 
reaches  to  the  top  of  the  scenic  wall;  the  other 
dimensions  are  not  remarkable.  The  division  to  the 
right,  as  you  face  the  stage,  is  pointed  out  as  the 
green-room ;  its  portentous  altitude  and  the  open 
arches  at  the  top  give  it  the  air  of  a  well.  The 
compartment  on  the  left  is  exactly  similar,  save  that 
it  opens  into  the  traces  of  other  chambers,  said  to 
be  those  of  a  hippodrome  adjacent  to  the  theatre. 
Various  fragments  are  visible  which  refer  themselves 
plausibly  to  such  an  establishment ;  the  greater  axis 
of  the  hippodrome  would  appear  to  have  been  on  a 
line  with  the  triumphal  arch.  This  is  all  I  saw,  and 


236  A  LITTLE   TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXVII. 

all  there  was  to  see,  of  Orange,  which  had  a  very 
rustic,  bucolic  aspect,  and  where  I  was  not  even 
called  upon  to  demand  breakfast  at  the  hotel.  The 
entrance  of  this  resort  might  have  been  that  of  a 
stable  of  the  Koman  days. 


XXXVII. 

I  HAVE  been  trying  to  remember  whether  I  fasted 
all  the  way  to  Macon,  which  I  reached  at  an  advanced 
hour  of  the  evening,  and  think  I  must  have  done  so 
except  for  the  purchase  of  a  box  of  nougat  at  Monte*- 
limart  (the  place  is  famous  for  the  manufacture  of 
this  confection,  which,  at  the  station,  is  hawked  at  the 
windows  of  the  train)  and  for  a  bouillon,  very  much 
later,  at  Lyons.  The  journey  beside  the  Ehone  — 
past  Valence,  past  Tournon,  past  Vienne  —  would 
have  been  charming,  on  that  luminous  Sunday,  but 
for  two  disagreeable  accidents.  The  express  from 
Marseilles,  which  I  took  at  Orange,  was  full  to  over 
flowing  ;  and  the  only  refuge  I  could  find  was  an 
inside  angle  in  a  carriage  laden  with  Germans,  who 
had  command  of  the  windows,  which  they  occupied 
as  strongly  as  they  have  been  known  to  occupy  other 
strategical  positions.  I  scarcely  know,  however,  why 
I  linger  on  this  particular  discomfort,  for  it  was  but 
a  single  item  in  a  considerable  list  of  grievances,  — 
grievances  dispersed  through  six  weeks  of  constant 
railway  travel  in  France.  I  have  not  touched  upon 
them  at  an  earlier  stage  of  this  chronicle,  but  my  re 
serve  is  not  owing  to  any  sweetness  of  association. 
This  form  of  locomotion,  in  the  country  of  the  ameni- 


XXXVII.]  MACON.  237 

ties,  is  attended  with  a  dozen  discomforts ;  almost  all 
the  conditions  of  the  business  are  detestable.  They 
force  the  sentimental  tourist  again  and  again  to  ask 
himself  whether,  in  consideration  of  such  mortal  an 
noyances,  the  game  is  worth  the  candle.  Fortunately, 
a  railway  journey  is  a  good  deal  like  a  sea  voyage ; 
its  miseries  fade  from  the  mind  as  soon  as  you  arrive. 
That  is  why  I  completed,  to  my  great  satisfaction, 
my  little  tour  in  France.  Let  this  small  effusion  of 
ill-nature  be  my  first  and  last  tribute  to  the  whole 
despotic  gare :  the  deadly  salle  d'attente,  the  insuffer 
able  delays  over  one's  luggage,  the  porterless  platform, 
the  overcrowded  and  illiberal  train.  How  many  a 
time  did  I  permit  myself  the  secret  reflection  that  it 
is  in  perfidious  Albion  that  they  order  this  matter 
best !  How  many  a  time  did  the  eager  British  mer 
cenary,  clad  in  velveteen  and  clinging  to  the  door  of 
the  carriage  as  it  glides  into  the  station,  revisit  my 
invidious  dreams !  The  paternal  porter  and  the  re 
sponsive  hansom  are  among  the  best  gifts  of  the  Eng 
lish  genius  to  the  world.  I  hasten  to  add,  faithful 
to  my  habit  (so  insufferable  to  some  of  my  friends)  of 
ever  and  again  readjusting  the  balance  after  I  have 
given  it  an  honest  tip,  that  the  bouillon  at  Lyons, 
which  I  spoke  of  above,  was,  though  by  no  means  an 
ideal  bouillon,  much  better  than  any  I  could  have 
obtained  at  an  English  railway  station.  After  I  had 
imbibed  it,  I  sat  in  the  train  (which  waited  a  long 
tii no  at  Lyons)  and,  by  the  light  of  one  of  the  big 
lamps  on  the  platform,  read  all  sorts  of  disagreeable 
Miiugs  in  certain  radical  newspapers  which  I  had 
uo ught  at  the  book-stall.  I  gathered  from  these  sheets 
that  Lyons  was  in  extreme  commotion.  The  Ehone 


238  A  LITTLE   TOUK  IN   FKANCE.  [XXXVII. 

and  the  Saone,  which  form  a  girdle  for  the  splendid 
town,  were  almost  in  the  streets,  as  I  could  easily  be 
lieve  from  what  I  had  seen  of  the  country  after  leav 
ing  Orange.  The  Ehone,  all  the  way  to  Lyons,  had 
been  in  all  sorts  of  places  where  it  had  no  business 
to  be,  and  matters  were  naturally  not  improved  by 
its  confluence  with  the  charming  and  copious  stream 
which,  at  Macon,  is  said  once  to  have  given  such  a 
happy  opportunity  to  the  egotism  of  the  capital.  A 
visitor  from  Paris  (the  anecdote  is  very  old),  being 
asked  on  the  quay  of  that  city  whether  he  did  n't 
admire  the  Saone,  replied  good-naturedly  that  it  was 
very  pretty,  but  that  in  Paris  they  spelled  it  with 
the  ei.  This  moment  of  general  alarm  at  Lyons  had 
been  chosen  by  certain  ingenious  persons  (I  credit 
them,  perhaps,  with  too  sure  a  prevision  of  the  rise 
of  the  rivers)  for  practising  further  upon  the -appre 
hensions  of  the  public.  A  bombshell  filled  with 
dynamite  had  been  thrown  into  a  cafe,  and  various 
votaries  of  the  comparatively  innocuous  petit  vcrre 
had  been  wounded  (I  am  not  sure  whether  any  one 
had  been  killed)  by  the  irruption.  Of  course  there  had 
been  arrests  and  incarcerations,  and  the  "Intransi- 
geant "  and  the  "  Eappel "  were  filled  with  the  echoes 
of  the  explosion.  The  tone  of  these  organs  is  rarely 
edifying,  and  it  had  never  been  less  so  than  on  this 
occasion.  I  wondered,  as  I  looked  through  them, 
whether  I  was  losing  all  my  radicalism;  and  then 
I  wondered  whether,  after  all,  I  had  any  to  lose. 
Even  in  so  long  a  wait  as  that  tiresome  delay  at  Lyons 
I  failed  to  settle  the  question,  any  more  than  I  made 
up  my  mind  as  to  the  probable  future  of  the  militant 
democracy,  or  the  ultimate  form  of  a  civilization 


XXXVII.]  MACON.  239 

which  should  have  blown  up  everything  else.  A  few 
days  later,  the  waters  went  down  at  Lyons ;  but  the 
democracy  has  not  gone  down. 

I  remember  vividly  the  remainder  of  that  evening 
which  I  spent  at  Macon,  —  remember  it  with  a  chat 
tering  of  the  teeth.  I  know  not  what  had  got  into 
the  place ;  the  temperature,  for  the  last  day  of  Octo 
ber,  was  eccentric  and  incredible.  These  epithets 
may  also  be  applied  to  the  hotel  itself,  —  an  ex 
traordinary  structure,  all  facade,  which  exposes  an 
uncovered  rear  to  the  gaze  of  nature.  There  is  a 
demonstrative,  voluble  landlady,  who  is  of  course  part 
of  the  facade;  but  everything  behind  her  is  a  trap 
for  the  winds,  with  chambers,  corridors,  staircases,  all 
exhibited  to  the  sky,  as  if  the  outer  wall  of  the  house 
had  been  lifted  off.  It  would  have  been  delightful 
for  Florida,  but  it  did  n't  do  for  Burgundy,  even  on 
the  eve  of  November  1st,  so  that  I  suffered  absurdly 
from  the  rigor  of  a  season  that  had  not  yet  begun. 
There  was  something  in  the  air;  I  felt  it  the  next 
day,  even  on  the  sunny  quay  of  the  Saone,  where  in 
spite  of  a  fine  southerly  exposure  I  extracted  little 
warmth  from  the  reflection  that  Alphonse  de  Lamar- 
tine  had  often  trodden  the  flags.  Macon  struck  me, 
somehow,  as  suffering  from  a  chronic  numbness,  and 
there  was  nothing  exceptionally  cheerful  in  the  re 
markable  extension  of  the  river.  It  was  no  longer  a 
river,  —  it  had  become  a  lake  ;  and  from  my  window, 
in  the  painted  face  of  the  inn,  I  saw  that  the  opposite 
bank  had  been  moved  back,  as  it  were,  indefinitely. 
Unfortunately,  the  various  objects  with  which  it  was 
furnished  had  not  been  moved  as  well,  the  consequence 
of  which  was  an  extraordinary  confusion  in  the  rela- 


240  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XXXVII. 

tions  of  things.  There  were  always  poplars  to  be 
seen,  but  the  poplar  had  become  an  aquatic  plant. 
Such  phenomena,  however,  at  Macon  attract  but  little 
attention,  as  the  Saone,  at  certain  seasons  of  the  year, 
is  nothing  if  not  expansive.  The  people  are  as  used 
to  it  as  they  appeared  to  be  to  the  bronze  statue  of 
Lamartine,  which  is  the  principal  monument  of  the 
place,  and  which,  representing  the  poet  in  a  frogged 
overcoat  and  top-boots,  improvising  in  a  high  wind, 
struck  me  as  even  less  casual  in  its  attitude  than 
monumental  sculpture  usually  succeeds  in  being.  It 
is  true  that  in  its  present  position  I  thought  better  of 
this  work  of  art,  which  is  from  the  hand  of  M.  Fal- 
quiere,  than  when  I  had  seen  it  through  the  factitious 
medium  of  the  Salon  of  1876.  I  walked  up  the  hill 
where  the  older  part  of  Macon  lies,  in  search  of  the 
natal  house  of  the  amant  d'Elvire,  the  Petrarch  whose 
Vaucluse  was  the  bosom  of  the  public.  The  Guide- 
Joanne  quotes  from  "  Les  Confidences  "  a  description 
of  the  birthplace  of  the  poet,  whose  treatment  of  the 
locality  is  indeed  poetical.  It  tallies  strangely  little 
with  the  reality,  either  as  regards  position  or  other 
features ;  and  it  may  be  said  to  be,  not  an  aid,  but  a 
direct  obstacle,  to  a  discovery  of  the  house.  A  very 
humble  edifice,  in  a  small  back  street,  is  designated 
by  a  municipal  tablet,  set  into  its  face,  as  the  scene 
of  Lamartine's  advent  into  the  world.  He  himself 
speaks  of  a  vast  and  lofty  structure,  at  the  angle  of  a 
place,  adorned  with  iron  clamps,  with  a  porte  haute  ct 
large  and  many  other  peculiarities.  The  house  with 
the  tablet  has  two  meagre  stories  above  the  basement, 
and  (at  present,  at  least)  an  air  of  extreme  shabbi- 
ness ;  the  place,  moreover,  never  can  have  been  vast. 


XXXVIII.]  BOURG-EN-BRESSE.  241 

Lamartine  was  accused  of  writing  history  incorrectly, 
and  apparently  he  started  wrong  at  first :  it  had  never 
become  clear  to  him  where  he  was  born.  Or  is  the 
tablet  wrong?  If  the  house  is  small,  the  tablet  is 
very  big. 

XXXVIII. 

THE  foregoing  reflections  occur,  in  a  cruder  form, 
as  it  were,  in  my  note-book,  where  I  find  this  re 
mark  appended  to  them:  "Don't  take  leave  of  La 
martine  on  that  contemptuous  note ;  it  will  be  easy 
to  think  of  something  more  sympathetic  ! "  Those 
friends  of  mine,  mentioned  a  little  while  since,  who 
accuse  me  of  always  tipping  back  the  balance,  could 
not  desire  a  paragraph  more  characteristic;  but  I 
wish  to  give  no  further  evidence  of  such  infirmities, 
and  will  therefore  hurry  away  from  the  subject, — 
hurry  away  in  the  train  which,  very  early  on  a  crisp, 
bright  morning,  conveyed  me,  by  way  of  an  excursion, 
to  the  ancient  city  of  Bourg-en-Bresse.  Shining  in 
early  light,  the  Saone  was  spread,  like  a  smooth, 
white  tablecloth,  over  a  considerable  part  of  the  flat 
country  that  I  traversed.  There  is  no  provision  made 
in  this  image  for  the  long,  transparent  screens  of  thin- 
twigged  trees  which  rose  at  intervals  out  of  the 
watery  plain ;  but  as,  under  the  circumstances,  there 
seemed  to  be  no  provision  for  them  in  fact,  I  will  let 
my  metaphor  go  for  what  it  is  worth.  My  journey 
was  (as  I  remember  it)  of  about  an  hour  and  a  half ; 
but  I  passed  no  object  of  interest,  as  the  phrase  is, 
whatever.  The  phrase  hardly  applies  even  to  Bourg 
itself,  which  is  simply  a  town  quelconque,  as  M.  Zola 

16 


242  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.          [XXXVUI. 

would  say.  Small,  peaceful,  rustic,  it  stands  in  the 
midst  of  the  great  dairy-feeding  plains  of  Bresse,  of 
which  fat  county,  sometime  property  of  the  house 
of  Savoy,  it  was  the  modest  capital.  The  blue  masses 
of  the  Jura  give  it  a  creditable  horizon,  but  the  only 
nearer  feature  it  can  point  to  is  its  famous  sepulchral 
church.  This  edifice  lies  at  a  fortunate  distance  from 
the  town,  which,  though  inoffensive,  is  of  too  common 
a  stamp  to  consort  with  such  a  treasure.  All  I  ever 
knew  of  the  church  of  Brou  I  had  gathered,  years 
ago,  from  Matthew  Arnold's  beautiful  poem,  which 
bears  its  name.  I  remember  thinking,  in  those  years, 
that  it  was  impossible  verses  could  be  more  touching 
than  these ;  and  as  I  stood  before  the  object  of  my 
pilgrimage,  in  the  gay  French  light  (though  the 
place  was  so  dull),  I  recalled  the  spot  where  I  had 
first  read  them,  and  where  I  read  them  again  and 
yet  again,  wondering  whether  it  would  ever  be  my 
fortune  to  visit  the  church  of  Brou.  The  spot  in 
question  was  an  armchair  in  a  window  which  looked 
out  on  some  cows  in  a  field ;  and  whenever  I  glanced 
at  the  cows  it  came  over  me  —  I  scarcely  know  why 
—  that  I  should  probably  never  behold  the  structure 
reared  by  the  Duchess  Margaret.  Some  of  our 
visions  never  come  to  pass ;  but  we  must  be  just,  — 
others  do.  "  So  sleep,  forever  sleep,  0  princely  pair ! " 
I  remembered  that  line  of  Matthew  Arnold's,  and  the 
stanza  about  the  Duchess  Margaret  coming  to  watch 
the  builders  on  her  palfry  white.  Then  there  came 
to  me  something  in  regard  to  the  moon  shining  on 
winter  nights  through  the  cold  clere-story.  The  tone 
of  the  place  at  that  hour  was  not  at  all  lunar ;  it  was 
cold  and  bright,  but  with  the  chill  of  an  autumn 


XXXVITI.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  BROU.  243 

morning;  yet  this,  even  with  the  fact  of  the  unex 
pected  remoteness  of  the  church  from  the  Jura  added 
to  it,  did  not  prevent  me  from  feeling  that  I  looked 
at  a  monument  in  the  production  of  which  —  or  at 
least  in  the  effect  of  which  on  the  tourist  mind  of 
to-day  —  Matthew  Arnold  had  been  much  concerned. 
By  a  pardonable  license  he  has  placed  it  a  few  miles 
nearer  to  the  forests  of  the  Jura  than  it  stands  at 
present.  It  is  very  true  that,  though  the  mountains 
in  the  sixteenth  century  can  hardly  have  been  in  a  dif 
ferent  position,  the  plain  which  separates  the  church 
from  them  may  have  been  bedecked  with  woods. 
The  visitor  to-day  cannot  help  wondering  why  the 
beautiful  building,  with  its  splendid  works  of  art,  is 
dropped  down  in  that  particular  spot,  which  looks  so 
accidental  and  arbitrary.  But  there  are  reasons  for 
most  things,  and  there  were  reasons  why  the  church 
of  Brou  should  be  at  Brou,  which  is  a  vague  little 
suburb  of  a  vague  little  town. 

The  responsibility  rests,  at  any  rate,  upon  the 
Duchess  Margaret,  —  Margaret  of  Austria,  daughter  of 
the  Emperor  Maximilian  and  his  wife  Mary  of  Bur 
gundy,  daughter  of  Charles  the  Bold.  This  lady  has 
a  high  name  in  history,  having  been  regent  of  the 
Netherlands  in  behalf  of  her  nephew,  the  Emperor 
Charles  V.,  of  whose  early  education  she  had  had 
the  care.  She  married  in  1501  Philibert  the  Hand 
some,  Duke  of  Savoy,  to  whom  the  province  of  Bresse 
belonged,  and  who  died  two  years  later.  She  had 
been  betrothed,  as  a  child,  to  Charles  VIII.  of  France, 
and  was  kept  for  some  time  at  the  French  court,  — 
that  of  her  prospective  father-in-law,  Louis  XI. ;  but 
she  was  eventually  repudiated,  in  order  that  her 


244  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.          [XXXVIII. 

fiance  might  marry  Anne  of  Brittany,  —  an  alliance 
so  magnificently  political  that  we  almost  condone 
the  offence  to  a  sensitive  princess.  Margaret  did  not 
want  for  husbands,  however,  inasmuch  as  before  her 
marriage  to  Philibert  she  had  been  united  to  John 
of  Castile,  son  of  Ferdinand  V.,  King  of  Aragon,  — 
an  episode  terminated,  by  the  death  of  the  Spanish 
prince,  within  a  year.  She  was  twenty-two  years 
regent  of  the  Netherlands,  and  died  at  fifty-one,  in 
1530.  She  might  have  been,  had  she  chosen,  the 
wife  of  Henry  VII.  of  England.  She  was  one  of 
the  signers  of  the  League  of  Cambray,  against  the 
Venetian  republic,  and  was  a  most  politic,  accom 
plished,  and  judicious  princess.  She  undertook  to 
build  the  church  of  Brou  as  a  mausoleum  for  her 
second  husband  and  herself,  in  fulfilment  of  a  vow 
made  by  Margaret  of  Bourbon,  mother  of  Philibert, 
who  died  before  she  could  redeem  her  pledge,  and 
who  bequeathed  the  duty  to  her  son.  He  died 
shortly  afterwards,  and  his  widow  assumed  the  pious 
task.  According  to  Murray,  she  intrusted  the  erec 
tion  of  the  church  to  "  Maistre  Loys  von  Berghem," 
and  the  sculpture  to  "  Maistre  Conrad."  The  author 
of  a  superstitious  but  carefully  prepared  little  No 
tice,  which  I  bought  at  Bourg,  calls  the  architect 
and  sculptor  (at  once)  Jehan  de  Paris,  author  (sic) 
of  the  tomb  of  Francis  II.  of  Brittany,  to  which 
we  gave  some  attention  at  Nantes,  and  which  the 
writer  of  my  pamphlet  ascribes  only  subordinately  to 
Michel  Colomb.  The  church,  which  is  not  of  great 
size,  is  in  the  last  and  most  flamboyant  phase  of 
gothic,  and  in  admirable  preservation ;  the  west 
front,  before  which  a  quaint  old  sun-dial  is  laid  out 


XXXVIII.]      THE  CHURCH  OF  BROU.          245 

on  the  ground,  —  a  circle  of  numbers  marked  in 
stone,  like  those  on  a  clock  face,  let  into  the  earth,  — 
is  covered  with  delicate  ornament.  The  great  feature, 
however  (the  nave  is  perfectly  bare  and  wonderfully 
new-looking,  though  the  warden,  a  stolid  yet  sharp 
old  peasant,  in  a  blouse,  who  looked  more  as  if  his 
line  were  chaffering  over  turnips  than  showing  off 
works  of  art,  told  me  that  it  has  never  been  touched, 
and  that  its  freshness  is  simply  the  quality  of  the 
stone),  —  the  great  feature  is  the  admirable  choir, 
in  the  midst  of  which  the  three  monuments  have 
bloomed  under  the  chisel,  like  exotic  plants  in  a 
conservatory.  I  saw  the  place  to  small  advantage, 
for  the  stained  glass  of  the  windows,  which  are  fine, 
was  under  repair,  and  much  of  it  was  masked  with 
planks. 

In  the  centre  lies  Philibert-le-Bel,  a  figure  of  white 
marble  on  a  great  slab  of  black,  in  his  robes  and  his 
armor,  with  two  boy-angels  holding  a  tablet  at  his 
head,  and  two  more  at  his  feet.  On  either  side  of 
him  is  another  cherub:  one  guarding  his  helmet, 
the  other  his  stiff  gauntlets.  The  attitudes  of  these 
charming  children,  whose  faces  are  all  bent  upon  him 
in  pity,  have  the  prettiest  tenderness  and  respect. 
The  table  on  which  he  lies  is  supported  by  elaborate 
columns,  adorned  with  niches  containing  little  images, 
and  with  every  other  imaginable  elegance;  and  be 
neath  it  he  is  represented  in  that  other  form,  so  com 
mon  in  the  tombs  of  the  Renaissance,  —  a  man  naked 
and  dying,  with  none  of  the  state  and  splendor  of  the 
image  above.  One  of  these  figures  embodies  the  duke, 
the  other  simply  the  mortal ;  and  there  is  something 
very  strange  and  striking  in  the  effect  of  the  latter, 


246  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXVIIL 

seen  dimly  and  with  difficulty  through  the  intervals 
of  the  rich  supports  of  the  upper  slab.  The  monu 
ment  of  Margaret  herself  is  on  the  left,  all  in  white 
marble,  tormented  into  a  multitude  of  exquisite  pat 
terns,  the  last  extravagance  of  a  gothic  which  had 
gone  so  far  that  nothing  was  left  it  but  to  return  upon 
itself.  Unlike  her  husband,  who  has  only  the  high 
roof  of  the  church  above  him,  she  lies  under  a  canopy 
supported  and  covered  by  a  wilderness  of  embroidery, 
—  flowers,  devices,  initials,  arabesques,  statuettes. 
Watched  over  by  cherubs,  she  is  also  in  her  robes 
and  ermine,  with  a  greyhound  sleeping  at  her  feet 
(her  husband,  at  his,  has  a  waking  lion) ;  and  the 
artist  has  not,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  represented  her 
as  more  beautiful  than  she  was.  She  looks,  indeed, 
like  the  regent  of  a  turbulent  realm.  Beneath  her 
couch  is  stretched  another  figure,  —  a  less  brilliant 
Margaret,  wrapped  in  her  shroud,  with  her  long  hair 
over  her  shoulders.  Eound  the  tomb  is  the  battered 
iron  railing  placed  there  originally,  with  the  myste 
rious  motto  of  the  duchess  worked  into  the  top, — 
fortune  infortune  fort  une.  The  other  two  monuments 
are  protected  by  barriers  of  the  same  pattern.  That 
of  Margaret  of  Bourbon,  Philibert's  mother,  stands 
on  the  right  of  the  choir ;  and  I  suppose  its  greatest 
distinction  is  that  it  should  have  been  erected  to  a 
mother-in-law.  It  is  but  little  less  florid  and  sump 
tuous  than  the  others;  it  has,  however,  no  second 
recumbent  figure.  On  the  other  hand,  the  statuettes 
that  surround  the  base  of  the  tomb  are  of  even  more 
exquisite  workmanship :  they  represent  weeping  wo 
men,  in  long  mantles  and  hoods,  which  latter  hang 
forward  over  the  small  face  of  the  figure,  giving  the 


XXXVIII.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  BROU.  247 

artist  a  chance  to  carve  the  features  within  this  hollow 
of  drapery,  —  an  extraordinary  play  of  skill.  There 
is  a  high,  white  marble  shrine  of  the  Virgin,  as  ex 
traordinary  as  all  the  rest  (a  series  of  compartments, 
representing  the  various  scenes  of  her  life,  with  the 
Assumption  in  the  middle) ;  and  there  is  a  magnifi 
cent  series  of  stalls,  which  are  simply  the  intricate 
embroidery  of  the  tombs  translated  into  polished  oak. 
All  these  things  are  splendid,  ingenious,  elaborate, 
precious ;  it  is  goldsmith's  work  on  a  monumental 
scale,  and  the  general  effect  is  none  the  less  beautiful 
and  solemn  because  it  is  so  rich.  But  the  monuments 
of  the  church  of  Brou  are  not  the  noblest  that  one 
may  see;  the  great  tombs  of  Verona  are  finer,  and 
various  other  early  Italian  work.  These  things  are 
not  insincere,  as  Kuskin  would  say;  but  they  are 
pretentious,  and  they  are  not  positively  no/if s.  I 
should  mention  that  the  walls  of  the  choir  are  em 
broidered  in  places  with  Margaret's  tantalizing  device, 
which  —  partly,  perhaps,  because  it  is  tantalizing  — 
is  so  very  decorative,  as  they  say  in  London.  I  know 
not  whether  she  was  acquainted  with  this  epithet; 
but  she  had  anticipated  one  of  the  fashions  most 
characteristic  of  our  age. 

One  asks  one's  self  how  all  this  decoration,  this 
luxury  of  fair  and  chiselled  marble,  survived  the 
French  Kevolution.  An  hour  of  liberty  in  the  choir 
of  Brou  would  have  been  a  carnival  for  the  image- 
breakers.  The  well-fed  Bressois  are  surely  a  good- 
natured  people.  I  call  them  well-fed  both  on  general 
and  on  particular  grounds.  Their  province  has  the 
most  savory  aroma,  and  I  found  an  opportunity  to 
test  its  reputation.  I  walked  back  into  the  town 


248  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXVIIL 

from  the  church  (there  was  really  nothing  to  be  seen 
by  the  way),  and  as  the  hour  of  the  midday  breakfast 
had  struck,  directed  my  steps  to  the  inn.  The  table 
d'hote  was  going  on,  and  a  gracious,  bustling,  talkative 
landlady  welcomed  me.  I  had  an  excellent  repast  — 
the  best  repast  possible  —  which  consisted  simply  of 
boiled  eggs  and  bread  and  butter.  It  was  the  qual 
ity  of  these  simple  ingredients  that  made  the  occa 
sion  memorable.  The  eggs  were  so  good  that  I  am 
ashamed  to  say  how  many  of  them  I  consumed.  "  La 
plus  belle  fille  du  monde,"  as  the  French  proverb  says, 
"  ne  peut  donner  que  ce  qu'elle  a ; "  and  it  might 
seem  that  an  egg  which  has  succeeded  in  being  fresh 
has  done  all  that  can  reasonably  be  expected  of  it. 
But  there  was  a  bloom  of  punctuality,  so  to  speak, 
about  these  eggs  of  Bourg,  as  if  it  had  been  the  in 
tention  of  the  very  hens  themselves  that  they  should 
be  promptly  served.  "  Nous  sommes  en  Bresse,  et  le 
beurre  n'est  pas  mauvais,"  the  landlady  said,  with  a 
sort  of  dry  coquetry,  as  she  placed  this  article  before 
me.  It  was  the  poetry  of  butter,  and  I  ate  a  pound 
or  two  of  it ;  after  which  I  came  away  with  a  strange 
mixture  of  impressions  of  late  gothic  sculpture  and 
thick  tartines.  I  came  away  through  the  town,  where, 
on  a  little  green  promenade,  facing  the  hotel,  is  a 
bronze  statue  of  Bichat,  the  physiologist,  who  was  a 
Bressois.  I  mention  it,  not  on  account  of  its  merit 
(though,  as  statues  go,  I  don't  remember  that  it  is 
bad),  but  because  I  learned  from  it  —  my  ignorance, 
doubtless,  did  me  little  honor  —  that  Bichat  had  died 
at  thirty  years  of  age,  and  this  revelation  was  almost 
agitating.  To  have  done  so  much  in  so  short  a  life 
was  to  be  truly  great  This  reflection,  which  looks 


XXXIX.]  BEAUNE.  249 

deplorably  trite  as  I  write  it  here,  had  the  effect  of 
eloquence  as  I  uttered  it,  for  my  own  benefit,  on  the 
bare  little  mall  at  Bourg. 


XXXIX. 

ON  my  return  to  Macon  I  found  myself  fairly  face  to 
face  with  the  fact  that  my  little  tour  was  near  its  end. 
Dijon  had  been  marked  by  fate  as  its  farthest  limit, 
and  Dijon  was  close  at  hand.  After  that  I  was  to 
drop  the  tourist,  and  re-enter  Paris  as  much  as  possible 
like  a  Parisian.  Out  of  Paris  the  Parisian  never  loi 
ters,  and  therefore  it  would  be  impossible  for  me  to 
stop  between  Dijon  and  the  capital.  But  I  might  be 
a  tourist  a  few  hours  longer  by  stopping  somewhere 
between  Macon  and  Dijon.  The  question  was  where 
I  should  spend  these  hours.  Where  better,  I  asked 
myself  (for  reasons  not  now  entirely  clear  to  me)  than 
at  Beaune  ?  On  my  way  to  this  town  I  passed  the 
stretch  of  the  Cote  d'Or,  which,  covered  with  a  mel 
low  autumn  haze,  with  the  sunshine  shimmering 
through,  looked  indeed  like  a  golden  slope.  One 
regards  with  a  kind  of  awe  the  region  in  which  the 
famous  crds  of  Burgundy  (Vougeot,  Chambertin,  Nuits, 
Beaune)  are,  I  was  going  to  say,  manufactured.  Adieu, 
paniers ;  vendanges  sont  faites  !  The  vintage  was 
over ;  the  shrunken  russet  fibres  alone  clung  to  their 
ugly  stick.  The  horizon  on  the  left  of  the  road  had 
a  charm,  however;  there  is  something  picturesque 
in  the  big,  comfortable  shoulders  of  the  Cote.  That 
delicate  critic,  M.  Emile  Montegut,  in  a  charming 
record  of  travel  through  this  region,  published  some 


250  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXIX. 

years  ago,  praises  Shakspeare  for  having  talked  (in 
"  Lear  ")  of  "  waterish  Burgundy."  Vinous  Burgundy 
would  surely  be  more  to  the  point.  I  stopped  at 
Beaune  in  pursuit  of  the  picturesque,  but  I  might 
almost  have  seen  the  little  I  discovered  without  stop 
ping.  It  is  a  drowsy 'little  Burgundian  town,  very 
old  and  ripe,  with  crooked  streets,  vistas  always  ob 
lique,  and  steep,  moss-covered  roofs.  The  principal 
lion  is  the  Hopital-Saint-Esprit,  or  the  Hotel-Dieu, 
simply,  as  they  call  it  there,  founded  in  1443  by 
Nicholas  Kollin,  Chancellor  of  Burgundy.  It  is  ad 
ministered  by  the  sisterhood  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
is  one  of  the  most  venerable  and  stately  of  hospitals. 
The  face  it  presents  to  the  street  is  simple,  but  strik 
ing,  —  a  plain,  windowless  wall,  surmounted  by  a  vast 
slate  roof,  of  almost  mountainous  steepness.  Astride 
this  roof  sits  a  tall,  slate-covered  spire,  from  which, 
as  I  arrived,  the  prettiest  chimes  I  ever  heard  (worse 
luck  to  them,  as  I  will  presently  explain)  were  ring 
ing.  Over  the  door  is  a  high,  quaint  canopy,  without 
supports,  with  its  vault  painted  blue  and  covered 
with  gilded  stars.  (This,  and  indeed  the  whole  build 
ing,  have  lately  been  restored,  and  its  antiquity  is 
quite  of  the  spick-and-span  order.  But  it  is  very 
delightful.)  The  treasure  of  the  place  is  a  precious 
picture,  —  a  Last  Judgment,  attributed  equally  to 
John  van  Eyck  and  Eoger  van  der  Weyden,  —  given 
to  the  hospital  in  the  fifteenth  century  by  Nicholas 
Kollin  aforesaid. 

I  learned,  however,  to  my  dismay,  from  a  sympar 
thizing  but  inexorable  concierge,  that  what  remained 
to  me  of  the  time  I  had  to  spend  at  Beaune,  between 
trains,  —  I  had  rashly  wasted  half  an  hour  of  it  in 


XXXIX.]  BEAUNE.  251 

breakfasting  at  the  station,  —  was  the  one  hour  of  the 
day  (that  of  the  dinner  of  the  nuns ;  the  picture  is  in 
their  refectory)  during  which  the  treasure  could  not 
be  shown.  The  purpose  of  the  musical  chimes  to 
which  I  had  so  artlessly  listened  was  to  usher  in  this 
fruitless  interval.  The  regulation  was  absolute,  and 
my  disappointment  relative,  as  I  have  been  happy  to 
reflect  since  I  "looked  up"  the  picture.  Crowe  and 
Cavalcaselle  assign  it  without  hesitation  to  Koger 
van  der  Weydeii,  and  give  a  weak  little  drawing  of  it 
in  their  "  Flemish  Painters."  I  learn  from  them  also — 
what  I  was  ignorant  of — that  Nicholas  Kollin,  Chan 
cellor  of  Burgundy  and  founder  of  the  establishment 
at  Beaune,  was  the  original  of  the  worthy  kneeling 
before  the  Virgin,  in  the  magnificent  John  van  Eyck 
of  the  Salon  Carre.  All  I  could  see  was  the  court  of 
the  hospital  and  two  or  three  rooms.  The  court,  with 
its  tall  roofs,  its  pointed  gables  and  spires,  its  wooden 
galleries,  its  ancient  well,  with  an  elaborate  superstruc 
ture  of  wrought  iron,  is  one  of  those  places  into  which 
a  sketcher  ought  to  be  let  loose.  It  looked  Flemish 
or  English  rather  than  French,  and  a  splendid  tidiness 
pervaded  it.  The  "porter  took  me  into  two  rooms  on 
the  ground-floor,  into  which  the  sketcher  should  also 
be  allowed  to  penetrate;  for  they  made  irresistible 
pictures.  One  of  them,  of  great  proportions,  painted 
in  elaborate  "  subjects,"  like  a  ball-room  of  the  seven 
teenth  century,  was  filled  with  the  beds  of  patients, 
all  draped  in  curtains  of  dark  red  cloth,  the  tradi 
tional  uniform  of  these  eleemosynary  couches.  Among 
them  the  sisters  moved  about,  in  their  robes  of  white 
flannel,  with  big  white  linen  hoods.  The  other  room 
was  a  strange,  immense  apartment,  lately  restored 


252  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN  FRANCE.  [XXXIX. 

with  much  splendor.  It  was  of  great  length  and 
height,  had  a  painted  and  gilded  barrel-roof,  and  one 
end  of  it  —  the  one  I  was  introduced  to  —  appeared 
to  serve  as  a  chapel,  as  two  white-robed  sisters  were 
on  their  knees  before  an  altar.  This  was  divided  by 
red  curtains  from  the  larger  part ;  but  the  porter  lifted 
one  of  the  curtains,  and  showed  me  that  the  rest 
of  it,  a  long,  imposing  vista,  served  as  a  ward,  lined 
with  little  red-draped  beds.  "C'est  1'heure  de  la 
lecture,"  remarked  my  guide ;  and  a  group  of  conva 
lescents —  all  the  patients  I  saw  were  women — were 
gathered  in  the  centre  around  a  nun,  the  points  of 
whose  white  hood  nodded  a  little  above  them,  and 
whose  gentle  voice  came  to  us  faintly,  with  a  little 
echo,  down  the  high  perspective.  I  know  not  what 
the  good  sister  was  reading,  —  a  dull  book,  I  am  afraid, 
—  but  there  was  so  much  color,  and  such  a  fine,  rich 
air  of  tradition  about  the  whole  place,  that  it  seemed 
to  me  I  would  have  risked  listening  to  her.  I  turned 
away,  however,  with  that  sense  of  defeat  which  is 
always  irritating  to  the  appreciative  tourist,  and  pot 
tered  about  Beaune  rather  vaguely  for  the  rest  of  my 
hour :  looked  at  the  statue  of  Gaspard  Monge,  the 
mathematician,  in  the  little  place  (there  is  no  place  in 
France  too  little  to  contain  an  effigy  to  a  glorious  son) ; 
at  the  fine  old  porch  —  completely  despoiled  at  the 
Eevolution  —  of  the  principal  church;  and  even  at 
the  meagre  treasures  of  a  courageous  but  melancholy 
little  museum,  which  has  been  arranged — part  of  it 
being  the  gift  of  a  local  collector  —  in  a  small  hotel 
de  ville.  I  carried  away  from  Beaune  the  impression 
of  somthing  mildly  autumnal,  —  something  rusty  yet 
kindly,  like  the  taste  of  a  sweet  russet  pear. 


XL.]  DIJON.  253 


XL. 


IT  was  very  well  that  my  little  tour  was  to  termi 
nate  at  Dijon;  for  I  found,  rather  to  my  chagrin, 
that  there  was  not  a  great  deal,  from  the  pictorial 
point  of  view,  to  be  done  with  Dijon.  It  was  no 
great  matter,  for  I  held  my  proposition  to  have  been 
by  this  time  abundantly  demonstrated , —  the  propo 
sition  with  which  I  started :  that  if  Paris  is  France, 
France  is  by  no  means  Paris.  If  Dijon  was  a  good 
deal  of  a  disappointment,  I  felt,  therefore,  that  I  could 
afford  it.  It  was  time  for  me  to  reflect,  also,  that  for 
my  disappointments,  as  a  general  thing,  I  had  only 
myself  to  thank.  They  had  too  often  been  the  con 
sequence  of  arbitrary  preconceptions,  produced  by  in 
fluences  of  which  I  had  lost  the  trace.  At  any  rate, 
I  will  say  plumply  that  the  ancient  capital  of  Bur 
gundy  is  wanting  in  character;  it  is  not  up  to  the 
mark.  It  is  old  and  narrow  and  crooked,  and  it  has 
been  left  pretty  well  to  itself :  but  it  is  not  high  and 
overhanging ;  it  is  not,  to  the  eye,  what  the  Burgun- 
dian  capital  should  be.  It  has  some  tortuous  vistas, 
some  mossy  roofs,  some  bulging  fronts,  some  gray- 
faced  hotels,  which  look  as  if  in  former  centuries  — 
in  the  last,  for  instance,  during  the  time  of  that  de 
lightful  President  de  Brosses,  whose  Letters  from 
Italy  throw  an  interesting  side-light  on  Dijon  —  they 
had  witnessed  a  considerable  amount  of  good  living. 
But  there  is  nothing  else.  I  speak  as  a  man  who 
for  some  reason  which  he  does  n't  remember  now,  did 
not  pay  a  visit  to  the  celebrated  Puits  de  Moise,  an 
ancient  cistern,  embellished  with  a  sculptured  figure 
of  the  Hebrew  lawgiver. 


254  A  LITTLE  TOUR  IN   FRANCE.  [XL. 

The  ancient  palace  of  the  Dukes  of  Burgundy,  long 
since  converted  into  an  hotel  de  ville,  presents  to  a 
wide,  clean  court,  paved  with  washed-looking  stones, 
and  to  a  small  semicircular  place,  opposite,  which 
looks  as  if  it  had  tried  to  be  symmetrical  and  had 
failed,  a.  facade  and  two  wings,  characterized  by  the 
stiffness,  but  not  by  the  grand  air,  of  the  early  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  It  contains,  however,  a  large 
and  rich  museum,  —  a  museum  really  worthy  of  a  capi 
tal.  The  gem  of  this  exhibition  is  the  great  banquet- 
ing-hall  of  the  old  palace,  one  of  the  few  features  of 
the  place  that  has  not  been  essentially  altered.  Of 
great  height,  roofed  with  the  old  beams  and  cornices, 
it  contains,  filling  one  end,  a  colossal  Gothic  chimney- 
piece,  with  a  fireplace  large  enough  to  roast,  not  an  ox, 
but  a  herd  of  oxen.  In  the  middle  of  this  striking 
hall,  the  walls  of  which  are  covered  with  objects 
more  or  less  precious,  have  been  placed  the  tombs  of 
Philippe-le-Hardi  and  Jean-sans-Peur.  These  monu 
ments,  very  splendid  in  their  general  effect,  have  a 
limited  interest.  The  limitation  comes  from  the  fact 
that  we  see  them  to-day  in  a  transplanted  and  muti 
lated  condition.  Placed  originally  in  a  church  which 
has  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  demol 
ished  and  dispersed  at  the  Eevolution,  they  have 
been  reconstructed  and  restored  out  of  fragments  re 
covered  and  pieced  together.  The  piecing  has  been 
beautifully  done;  it  is  covered  with  gilt  and  with 
brilliant  paint ;  the  whole  result  is  most  artistic.  But 
the  spell  of  the  old  mortuary  figures  is  broken,  and  it 
will  never  work  again.  Meanwhile  the  monuments 
are  immensely  decorative. 

I  think  the  thing  that  pleased  me  best  at  Dijon 


XJL]  DIJON.  255 

was  the  little  old  Pare,  a  charming  public  garden, 
about  a  mile  from  the  town,  to  which  I  walked  by  a 
long,  straight  autumnal  avenue.  It  is  a  jardin  fran- 
qais  of  the  last  century,  —  a  dear  old  place,  with 
little  blue-green  perspectives  and  alleys  and  rond- 
points,  in  which  everything  balances.  I  went  there 
late  in  the  afternoon,  without  meeting  a  creature, 
though  I  had  hoped  I  should  meet  the  President  de 
Brosses.  At  the  end  of  it  was  a  little  river  that 
looked  like  a  canal,  and  on  the  further  bank  was  an 
old-fashioned  villa,  close  to  the  water,  with  a  little 
French  garden  of  its  own.  On  the  hither  side  was  a 
bench,  on  which  I  seated  myself,  lingering  a  good 
while ;  for  this  was  just  the  sort  of  place  I  like.  It 
was  the  furthermost  point  of  my  little  tour.  I  thought 
that  over,  as  I  sat  there,  on  the  eve  of  taking  the  ex 
press  to  Paris  ;  and  as  the  light  faded  in  the  Pare  the 
vision  of  some  of  the  things  I  had  seen  became  more 
distinct. 


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